


Remember that time in the place where we did that thing?

by blythechild



Category: Criminal Minds
Genre: Angst, Christmas Party, Coffee Shops, Denial of Feelings, Doubt, Dream Sex, Drug-Induced Sex, Dysfunctional Family, Emotional Hurt/Comfort, F/M, Friendship/Love, Holidays, Hurt/Comfort, Inappropriate Behavior, Jealousy, Las Vegas, Male-Female Friendship, Meddling, Memory Loss, Misunderstandings, Mother-Daughter Relationship, Nerdiness, One Night Stands, Romantic Friendship, Secrets, Self Confidence Issues, Sexual Content, Unresolved Romantic Tension, Workplace Relationship
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-05-10
Updated: 2015-05-10
Packaged: 2018-03-29 23:04:12
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 27
Words: 42,018
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3913996
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/blythechild/pseuds/blythechild
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Reid and Prentiss spend a hazy night together in Las Vegas that neither of them can remember. They agree to put it behind them, but as time passes it becomes obvious that they can't avoid the costs of <i>that one night...</i></p><p> </p><p>This is a work of fanfiction and as such I do not claim ownership over the characters herein. It was created as a personal amusement. This story contains sexual content, violence, and adult themes. It should not be read by those under the age of 18.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> This story was inspired by a prompt from dionne_2k. I think. Anyway, she's gonna get credit for it ;)

Reid opened his eyes and the first thing that hit him was that he had no idea where he was. The drapes were open allowing in a frightening amount of sunlight that felt like a physical assault as he tried to shield himself from the glare. Half turning in the bed, another fact assailed him: he was naked. He never slept naked. And then, as if his bodily senses all came online at once, he realized that he felt awful. His eyes were dry and sandy, and it appeared that he’d slept with his contacts in. His mouth tasted disgusting, stained and parched at the same time, which could only mean that he’d been drinking. And then his whole body ached, not from injury, but in a strained way as if he’d been hiking or maybe running for his life.

Then he felt that he wasn’t alone. Something was draped over his waist and he carefully lifted the bed sheet to see what it was. An arm, long and tanned curved around him… and there was warmth along the line of his back. _Oh no_ , he closed his eyes and swallowed down his dry mouth. _Vegas_.

His heart began to pound as he stirred up the courage to find out who his bedmate was, and then he forced his eyes open to slowly, carefully follow the line of that arm behind him to its owner. He rolled gently onto his back; the arm adjusted to the movement and there was a hushed sigh next to him just as he saw the face that accompanied it.

 _Oh. FUCK._ He actually swore inside his head as he looked on the sleeping face of Emily Prentiss. She was a hot mess: hair sticking out in every direction, mouth swollen and smeared with remnants of lipstick, and a collection of bite marks along her neck and chest that were already purpling up into bruises.

 _FUCK!_ He didn’t know what to do other than to get out of that bed before she woke up. This wasn’t okay - they’d known each other a couple of years now and they were friends. There was no previous behavior pattern that could logically lead to this outcome, and without something like that to hang the responsibility on, it was going to make things at work punishingly awkward. 

What was she even doing here?! He fought his hazy memory and came up with an image of meeting her as he walked back to his hotel. He was in town to visit his mother, and she had just finished a criminology lecture at a law enforcement seminar at the Convention Center. They decided to grab some dinner together and then… The rest fell back into a disjointed blur. He breathed out harshly in frustration and then checked himself, looking over to see if he had woken her. She shifted and rolled her face into the pillow and he decided to take advantage of it and slip out of bed. He stood by the edge of the mattress and stared at her for another moment. The sheet had slipped down along her back and sunlight lit her body. There were more bruises there, in the shape of fingers and he had a shocked moment of trying to figure out if he’d done that to her. He shook his head, which set off a swirling bout of dizziness, and then turned to find the bathroom before he became sick. 

He stumbled into the ensuite bath and locked the door behind him. As he straightened, he caught sight of himself in the large mirror above the sink and stopped, staring gape-mouthed. His hair was equally tangled and he had teeth marks along his neck as well, but also bruised bite marks down his torso and over one hip. And his back felt like it was on fire. He turned and saw long scratch marks in the reflection. Some were deep enough to have drawn blood. He touched one line gingerly, eyes wide with amazement at the implications, and then decided that he _had_ to retrieve some memories of last night if only to know what subjects to avoid taking about in front of Prentiss in the future. But, first, a shower…

The water was deliciously hot and helped take away some of the body ache while allowing him to clear his head and focus a little. His back stung when the spray hit it, and as he turned to lessen the impact, the same sensory information flared from his dick as the water hit it. 

_Jesus, was there any part of me that didn’t have a rough night?_

He scrubbed, and stretched, and marinated in the steam until his mind started to spit out troubling ideas at an alarming rate: he hoped that it was consensual, he hoped that they’d been safe, he prayed that they could both get past this with their friendship intact, he wondered if it was wise to poke at his hazy memory until the truth emerged. He just wanted to get out of this hotel and as far away from this moment as possible. It felt like cowardice but all he could think about was that he _didn’t_ know what he’d done and he was deeply worried about wrecking things with Prentiss. 

_Emily, man, you saw her naked… maybe you should think of her as Emily._

His memory suddenly offered up a flash of her face as he looked down over her, hair splayed across a creased pillow. Her eyes were wide, looking at him as if she could pull him to her with that stare alone, gasping for breath as they moved together. The look she gave him… it was scorching, demanding, as if she owned him… He pressed his hand against the shower wall as the memory flared and faded, leaving hot streaks along his limbs to awaken his aching muscles again. He had to get out of there right. now. 

He stumbled out of the shower and found the biggest towel in the room to wrap around himself. It still only covered half of his body, but he just needed it long enough to find his clothes and get out of wherever they were. It wasn’t his hotel - he knew that much. He needed clothes, and to pack, and to go home to D.C. Maybe then he could allow himself to think. He took a deep breath and unlocked the door; hopefully, Emily would still be asleep. He stepped out and saw an immediate reaction from the bed. Emily clutched the sheet around her like armor and stared at him with a mixture of horror and relief.

“Ummm, hey.” He waved. He _actually_ waved, and then dropped his gaze to his feet. _Shit._

She didn’t say anything and he felt his cheeks go crimson in the silence. This was turning into something awful. He just had to go, gogogogo…

“I’m just gonna… you know, grab my clothes and, ummm, go. Just give me two minutes, and I’ll be out of your hair.”

Another memory flashed through him making him wobble as he stood. Her hands in his hair as she held him close, breathing hard against his neck. He stretched under her and felt her tighten around him… she was so close he could almost feel it in his own body…

“You okay?” Her voice sounded small across the room, and when his eyes snapped to her it was almost a relief to recognize the concern there.

“Yeah, I’m just… having a hard time finding my balance this morning.” He rubbed his hand over his face to stop himself from looking at her. “I’m sorry. I’ll get it together in a sec.”

“It’s fine, Reid-”

He turned away to pick up his pants and heard her gasp. He closed his eyes and cursed silently. She must’ve seen his back. He moved rapidly after that, finding his shoes, shirt, jacket and socks as quickly as one possibly could with short-term memory loss and only a towel with which to maintain a semblance of decency. He couldn’t find his tie - he could’ve sworn that he was wearing a tie yesterday - but the room was too big to do a comprehensive sweep. It was like an executive suite or something, and all he wanted to do was to leave, so… he’d sacrifice the tie.

“What happened to us?” Her question sounded so sad and lost, that it almost changed his mind about fleeing. _She’s your friend, and she’s just as screwed up here as you are…_

“I don’t know. It’s all jumbled up in my head.” He looked back as he clutched his clothes to his chest. She’d relaxed a little, but still held the bed sheet almost up to her chin. “I-I’m really sorry, Emily… for whatever happened here last night. And… I’ve just got to go. I was hoping to leave without waking you… to give us both a chance to regroup. I just can’t talk about this right now.”

She stared at him for a long moment. “Well, I’m glad I woke up otherwise I wouldn’t know who’d I’d been with last night.”

He hadn’t considered that. If he hadn’t been so wrapped up in his own anxiety he might have realized how horrible waking up alone in this circumstance might have been for her.

“Oh, right. Well, it was me, I guess. I don’t know if that’s better than it being a stranger or not.”

“Of course it’s better that it was you instead of a stranger,” she said sharply, as if it were obvious. “Do you really not remember anything at all?”

“No. You?”

“Not really. Do you suppose that we were drugged somewhere?”

“It’s possible. That sort of thing happens shockingly often, especially in tourist locations where victims are less likely to report it and withstand a prolonged investigation.”

“Yes, I know, Reid. You’re not the only FBI agent in the room.”

“Sorry.” He looked at his feet and rocked nervously. “Are you okay? I mean…”

“I’m pretty sore all over.”

Reid’s face flushed again.

“But you didn’t hurt me. It’s okay. We’re gonna be fine.”

That snapped his eyes back up to look at her again. “You sure? Because…”

“I think so.” She tried to force a smile, but he could see that she wasn’t confident. His heart skipped out a couple of painful beats at the idea that this was the moment that would change them irrevocably. 

“I’ve gotta go,” he choked out.

“Yeah,” she nodded, still soldiering through her smile. “Go. I’ll see you in the office on Monday.”

“‘Kay. Be safe.” It seemed a bit too late for that sentiment, but he worried for her nonetheless.

He hustled into the next room, which was bigger than most hotel rooms he’d ever stayed in, dressed as if the place were in flames, and then made a hasty exit before he changed his mind and decided to go back and ask her _exactly_ how they were going to get past this. He felt terrible as his relief increased the further away he got from that hotel suite, but some situations just don’t leave you with much dignity. He put his mind to figuring out what happened from his addled memories, and finding a way to set things right between them. That was the most honor he could muster in all of this.

~~~~

She listened for the sound of the door, and when she heard the buzz-click of the automatic lock, she let out the breath she’d been holding and hugged her knees into her chest in the bed. 

Jesus. She’d slept with Spencer Reid. She’d slept with him and couldn’t remember a damned thing about it. The only real upside to this was that he didn’t seem to remember it either.

She leaned back into the mess of pillows and groaned as she recognized the state she was in for the first time. She ached all over. No, it was more than that - she was sorer than she’d ever been after spending a night with someone. That thought momentarily did a little number on her brain when she tried to reconcile that with spending the night _with Reid_. She dropped the sheet from her chest and saw bite marks purpling into bruises over her breasts. She brushed her fingers over one in muted awe.

And then, like a chain reaction, it all slammed into her at once: the hurt and confusion, the sense of violation and the horrible fear that settled in her stomach when he couldn’t look her in the eye, the inexplicable shame, and also the ghostly weight of him still lurking inside her as if she didn’t want to let him go. Her pulse slammed against her bruised wrists, thrummed through her guts, and pushed into her throat… she imagined his lips against her neck but had absolutely no memory of the sensation. And then she felt as though she might be sick.

She made it to the bathroom in time to splash water on her face and calm her panic to a reasonable level. All she could think about as she watched the water circling the drain before her eyes was: _Reid, tell me you know how to fix this…_


	2. Chapter 2

Part of it came back to him while he dozed on the flight home to D.C. They’d had a bottle of wine with dinner, but that wasn’t unusual for them, and it would take more than that to induce a blackout. An image of them leaving the restaurant and wandering into a casino flashed before him. Prentiss pestering him to join one of the poker tables… a series of successful hands and winnings, both of them carried away with the victory… then a craps table… he didn’t play but she did and she was good at it. He was impressed. There were drinks and congratulations, a crowd around them… then the memories got mixed up… they were hanging off each other, laughing too hard… there was a guy dressed like Elvis and a woman with a bouffant straight out of the 50s playing an organ… then he was nipping at Emily’s neck as she held him too close, pulling him away from a room that was too brightly lit, her fingers digging into his arm with too much force…

He slammed awake and went tense in his seat trying to follow the fading trail in his mind. 

Desperate grappling in an elevator, her lips rough and insistent… a darkened room, a long window lit by the lights from the street below… he pushes her against it and she struggles a little, but she’s wet and grinding against him and he can’t stop himself. 

Then a different kind of darkness as he feels surrounded, her thighs brush his face as she squirms, his tongue makes another pass and she moans. _Don’t wake up_ , he murmurs into her skin. 

Time slips again and he feels like he’ll explode if he comes one more time but she’s clutching him so close it seems that she’ll tear him apart and she’s crying out his name as she bucks and it’s blowing what little conscious thought he has left with how amazing it feels and he asks _How much longer can this go on?_

And then he’s sore and exhausted and the light has changed yet again, and he rolls towards her because he can’t get enough, never enough… just one more time…

He was breathing audibly and gripping the armrests for dear life as it came back to him all messy and urgent.

“Are you all right, sir?”

He looked up and saw a concerned flight attendant leaning in from the aisle towards him.

“M-may I have some water?”

“Absolutely. Are you sure that’s all you need? If you are ill or have anxiety, we can help with that.”

“No, I’ll be fine. Water would be great though.”

“Of course.”

“Crap,” he mumbled after she left, and then quickly looked around to see if anyone heard him.

They must have been drugged, probably in the casino. There was no other explanation for the memory gaps, the frantic intensity, or the out of character behavior. Prentiss was right: it would have been a lot more frightening to go through all of that with a random, and presumably sober, stranger. They were fortunate that they hadn’t been separated before the drug took effect. He’d have to look into it when he got back but he assumed it was a euphoria-inducing hallucinogen like ecstasy or ketamine mixed with a moderate anesthetic for bidablity. If the dosage was off, he’d have no memory at all and would probably only be able to participate in a passive way. But his memories seemed far from passive.

“Here you go, sir.” The flight attendant made him jump as she placed the bottled water in front of him. “Are you sure you’re okay?”

“I’m sure I will be.” 

He wasn’t sure at all, really. He found the memories disturbing and compelling, and knew himself well enough that he’d analyze them six ways from Sunday, which was going to make getting past them that much more difficult. At least they had both been affected equally, he thought. They both seemed out of control, but in the same way. He could let go of his fear of harming Emily. Other than the inevitable awkwardness and fractured memories, it probably wouldn’t get any worse. He sipped at his water and laid his head back telling himself that he could handle this, he and Prentiss would recover. They just had to put Vegas behind them.


	3. Chapter 3

Reid stepped off the elevator and rose up on his toes to see as much of the bullpen as possible. It was still early and not many agents were in yet; he didn’t see Prentiss. He’d probably beaten her in, what with all of his nervous energy built up over a weekend of navel-gazing about Vegas. He decided against all logic to fix himself some coffee because surely some more caffeine would straighten him out. He dropped his bag at his desk, retrieved his travel mug, and headed for the staff kitchen. He was focusing on his shoes as he walked in and nearly ran into her as she turned from the coffee machine.

“Oh jeez, sorry!” She swerved to avoid touching him. “I didn’t hear you come up behind me.”

He felt his face flush at her comment and wished that he hadn’t spent the weekend plumbing his memory for more details about their night together.

“S’okay, I should pay more attention.” To, like, _everything_ , and then maybe they wouldn’t have been caught up in this mess. 

He brushed past her and his heart sank as he reached for the carafe and fixed his coffee. He felt her watching him, waiting for the first post-incident conversation to begin. Maybe she was as worried about setting a tone as he was, but she didn’t know what was coming and he did. It made his stomach churn hard enough to stop him in mid-stir as he sagged over his mug.

“Listen, Reid,” she sighed behind him. “It’s really okay. I don’t remember anything. I tried but it’s all just… blank. Maybe that’s for the best, ya know? No evidence… we can just move on.”

He turned around and forced himself to look at her. Then he reached into his jacket pocket and pulled out a wrinkled, washed out piece of paper. “That’s not exactly accurate. I found this after I washed my clothes from Vegas.”

He handed her the paper and she squinted as she tried to make out the faded print. Then her eyes widened and she looked back at him.

“Really?” she whispered.

“Yeah, I called the place on Saturday and they confirm us in the registry. And before you ask, yes, it is legally binding. We did, indeed, get married.” 

“Oh, Christ…”

“Listen, Emily,” He reached for her and then dropped his hand. Instead he stepped forward and gently pulled the ragged certificate from her grip and secreted it away into his pocket once again. “I’m gonna take care of it. I’ll fly down next weekend and have it annulled. You don’t even have to come.”

“Is that what you want?” She looked a little stricken as she said it and it caused him to pause. He didn’t understand.

“Are you asking if I want to get it annulled or if I don’t want you to come along?”

She shook her head and stared at the kitchen cabinets blankly. It was as if her brain had hiccupped. “No, ummm… of course. An annulment. Are you sure that you don’t need me to be there as well?”

“It only takes one to find fault with the marriage and file the paperwork.”

“I see.”

They both stood in silence, he looking at the buttons on her coat, and she looking at the cabinet doors.

“Is this really gonna be all right, Emily?” he whispered. “The thought of us having conversations this awkward for the rest of our professional lives makes me sick to my stomach. You’re my friend… I need that.”

He saw the buttons shift as she straightened and then a moment later she walked forward and gave him a hug. The kind that they’d grown accustomed to over the years.

“We’ll be fine,” she breathed into his collar. “I need our friendship too. We just have to give this some time to wear off, that’s all. It shouldn’t take too long considering that neither of us remembers much about it.”

He let out a sad sigh that she probably took for relief. “Okay. Thank you.”

“No, thank _you_ for being a stand-up guy about this.” She backed away and gave him a smile. “Believe it or not, your anxiety and concern makes this a bit easier for me. Sorry… that sounds sorta selfish, doesn’t it?”

“I get what you’re saying,” he nodded.

“Okay, well…” She hesitantly wrapped an arm around his shoulders and he sagged into it out of habit. “C’mon, friend, let’s get on with our lives, shall we?”

“Sure.” He shrugged and they walked back to their desks with their coffees as if it were any other day.

~~~~

Text message: Spencer Reid: It’s done.

Emily Prentiss: Wow. That fast?

Spencer Reid: Processing the paperwork will take a few weeks, but yes. This is a town familiar with the regret that comes from hastily made decisions.

Emily Prentiss: I’m sorry that you had to do that. I should have come with you.

Spencer Reid: There was no need. I’m fine, Emily.

Emily Prentiss: Okay, well, thank you.

Spencer Reid: What are friends for?


	4. Chapter 4

Reid paused the movie and contemplated his options. It wasn’t working; he was still distracted by his giant, stubborn brain. He was worrying about things that felt beyond his ability to change - like whether he had lost the confidence of Prentiss’s friendship even though she claimed the opposite. And he was worrying about how often he thought on the details that led to that situation. On instinct, his gaze moved to his writing desk and then he forced his eyes away as he got angry with himself.

“The first problem is linked to the second, genius,” he growled. “Just stop fixating for once in your life and maybe you could pretend to be a normal guy. She got over it - _you need_ to get over it.”

His second trip to Vegas had left him off balance and he’d been struggling ever since to act as everyone expected him to. He buried himself in work, and that helped, but he couldn’t shake the uneasiness he felt as if the world had been slightly tilted and he couldn’t adjust his vision to it. Filing the annulment papers had been harder than he let on to Prentiss: it wasn’t the process that was difficult, but it was the feeling of disappointment that it carried. It obviously had to happen, but the more he fleshed out the details of that night, the more convinced he became that there was a hazy purpose to it all. It had been _his_ idea to get married, not hers - he recalled that much - and he couldn’t help but think that his drug-addled self had meant something by it. It was such an uncharacteristic impulse for him; Spencer Reid had never considered that he’d ever get married in the first place. 

But all of this introspection was beside the point, and it was the reason why he lost _hours_ to thinking about Vegas when he wasn’t embroiled in a case. It was just one night. He had to let it go. 

But the paperwork had finally been mailed to him from the county registrar’s office this week and now he couldn’t sit still long enough to get through a movie without the questions and the anxieties and the memories chattering away at him inside his head…

His phone suddenly rang and did a little dance across his coffee table making him twitch like a feral cat. He squinted at the caller i.d. and then twitched again before reaching out and accepting the call.

“Hi.”

“Hey. Whatcha doing? Am I disturbing you?”

Actually, ‘disturbing’ was a perfect word to describe his current mindset about Prentiss, but he coughed and tried to act casually even when his voice rose higher than he’d like it to be.

“No, not really. Just doing some laundry and watching a movie.”

“Wow. How can you handle a life with so much glamour in it?”

“I’ve learned to pace myself.”

She giggled and the sound made him lighter. He could always make her laugh - that hadn’t changed.

“So, what are you doing on this glorious Saturday night?”

Prentiss sighed loudly, and he heard muffled background noises as if she were driving.

“I’m thinking of running away to the circus. Wanna come with me?”

“I don’t think reciting Pi to a thousand places is a freak skill that the public is willing to pay to see.”

She laughed again, but it wasn’t quite as heartfelt this time.

“What are you actually running away from, Prentiss?”

“My mother. I’m nearly forty years old and she can still reduce me to a petulant child over dinner… it’s like she has some weird voodoo or something.”

“What did you argue about? I mean… if you don’t mind me asking…”

“Babies.”

“Pardon?”

“She wants grandchildren. Like, yesterday. She’s not even insisting that I get married anymore… apparently that dream ship has sailed…”

Reid’s whole body went tense and he found himself clutching his phone until his fingers cramped. He hadn’t expected such a personal conversation from her, and to have it launched so casually. Even before Vegas, they never talked about stuff like this.

“She basically spent ninety minutes implying what a massive disappointment I was to her while simultaneously demanding that I pass on my questionable characteristics with the nearest guy I could convince to donate sperm. There were Dust Bowl metaphors used in reference to my ladyparts and everything… the whole evening was spectacularly offensive. I’m starting to wonder if I’m adopted.”

“Ummm… well… I mean, wow.”

“Oh, Reid.” He heard her gasp and he immediately wished that he had said something different, something more assuring to her. “I’m sorry. I-I shouldn’t have dumped all that on you. I just needed to vent, I guess, and you just… ya know, asked an’ stuff. Fuck. And I even used the word ‘ladyparts’… I am a politeness-free zone tonight, apparently. Go back to your movie. I’m really sorry about this.”

She was talking so fast that his breathing sped up in sympathy. When he found the opportunity to speak, he realized that he hadn’t thought about what he said before he uttered it.

“Come over. I mean, if you want to. You can vent all you need to… about your ladyparts or… whatever.” He was actually cringing now. “I don’t mind, really. Or we don’t have to talk. We could just watch a movie… your choice. I think it’s a better plan than running away to the circus, although I’m biased… I mean, all my cool stuff is here, so…”

There was a long enough pause for him to consider running off to join the circus himself, but then she spoke as if they hadn’t just both been unbelievably awkward with one another.

“What movie are you watching?”

“Ghost In The Machine.”

“The original?”

“Of course. The sequel makes no sense.”

“It’s anime - it’s not supposed to make sense. We’re just supposed to revel in the cool outfits and covet their motorcycles and swords. Besides, the closing sequence in the sequel is still one of the prettiest things I’ve ever witnessed.”

A huge smile overtook him at the same time as his backbone slouched into his old sofa.

“Well, I’m open to convincing on that point. We can argue about it when you get here.”

“I’m on my way. See you in twenty.”

“I’ll make some popcorn.”

“Reid?”

“Yeah?”

“Thanks. You really are the best.”

She hung up before he could respond, but it didn’t matter. For once, the chattering in his mind had stopped.


	5. Chapter 5

Whatever she recalled came back to her passively while she slept. Try as she might, she couldn’t put together any kind of sensible narrative from the few stutters that her brain offered up. The marks on her body fascinated her and she catalogued them over and over as they faded away so that she wouldn’t forget them too. They were her only tangible record. Bite marks, bruises… she watched them go with a longing to know what they meant. It seemed impossible that Reid could do any of that to her, that he’d be so driven by something as to lose all sense of control over himself. When she considered that - and she thought about it a little too often - it sent a spasm of nervous energy out from her chest that left her tingling along her fingers and toes. She almost felt as if she’d spark if she moved, like a static electric charge waiting for an opportunity in a dry room. 

A month passed, and then two. They fell back into their routine of colleagues/casual friends without discussing it further, both of them radiating relief at being able to achieve that. But dreams haunted her. She’d be asleep, nuzzled deep in the sheets as the morning sun warmed her, and then she’d feel her hair brushed from her face. Hands pushed her shirt up her back and then lips ghosted along her bare spine sending a shiver through her. She’d turn slightly leaning back into those hands as lips suddenly closed over hers, gentle and languid. _Don’t wake up_ , he’d whisper and the way he said it made her toes curl. She’d keep her eyes closed and sigh, _This is gonna be so good…_ Other times the images would be stark and disjointed. He’d grip her hard enough to bruise, rasping harshly, open-mouthed into her hair as he took her from behind. She’d feel the cool glass of the window press against her breasts and cheek, lights from the Strip below making it seem as though they were floating above everything. Her hands would slip on the glass as she tried to anchor herself, his hips slamming into her again and again and again while the window vibrated in sympathy…

When she woke, there were always a few precious seconds where it felt as real as anything she’d lived through. But it disintegrated as soon as she realized that it was just random images arranged by synapses while the brain tried to process memories as she slept. It never happened, and even if some of it had, she’d never know for sure, and the not knowing was driving her crazy. Somehow, she felt that if she knew, she could do something about it, one way or the other. But maybe it was for the best that her memory had failed her. They were good as friends, maybe better now that this strange intimacy lay between them. They’d been fused together by shared survival. It meant that they weren’t as worried about embarrassment as they’d once been. After all, there would always be that thing they did that one time in that place that neither one of them could adequately put into words. That would always be the standard by which every other potential mistake would be measured. 

But even with a satisfying and miraculously restored friendship with Reid, she still _wanted to know_. It was the itch she couldn’t reach, the puzzle she couldn’t solve, the box of secrets that she was dying to unlock. And sometimes when the frustration really got to her, she wondered if he felt the same way - did he desperately want to know the way she did? It never appeared that way to her, and if he’d somehow shut that curiosity off, she wished that she knew how he did it. 

And if only the dreams would stop, fueled by the memories she collected every day of her friend’s expressions and gestures and casual kindnesses.

Damn. Fuck Vegas.


	6. Chapter 6

He was considering the implications of Avicenna’s Floating Man argument within the framework of deterministic faith philosophies late on a Thursday evening when she called him and all thoughts of self-awareness and knowing the face of God evaporated in favor of memories of her voice and smile and touch.

“What’s up?” He tried to avoid smiling and then stopped when he realized that she wouldn’t know anyway.

“Hey. So, I’ve got this sorta big and possibly friendship-ending favor to ask of you.”

“That sounds daunting.”

“You have no idea. Okay… here goes… Will you accompany me to a dinner party at my mother’s on Saturday?”

Reid blinked. “Seriously? The friendship-ending favor is asking me to dinner? You’re a riot, Prentiss. Of course I’ll go with you.”

“Now, hold on - consider what I’ve told you about them in the past. There will be plenty of politicians and foreign officials there, all of which are accustomed to being treated as if they aren’t professional assholes. It’ll be less like a dinner and more like an interminable Ingmar Bergman film. And there’s absolutely no guarantee that my mother won’t lay into me about my life choices even with a high profile audience in the room. The probability of suck is high for this occasion, Reid. I’m not kidding.”

“So, why are you going?”

“I ducked out of the last three. If I push it to four absences, she might send a black ops team to my condo.”

Reid chuckled. “Well, consider your due diligence completed, and I’ll still go with you.”

“Really?”

“Should I be offended that you sound so shocked? Yeah, really. You didn’t honestly think I’d say no, did you?”

“Umm… maybe. I dunno.” She sighed into the phone and he wondered why she was being so serious about one of her mother’s dinners. “Thank you, Reid. This is a relief.”

“You’re w-welcome,” he stammered. “Can I ask why you aren’t taking a date to this thing? I mean, it might offset your mother’s views on your personal priorities if you could offer her actual evidence that you are dating…”

Why had he said that? She had asked _him_ \- why was questioning it?

“Oh, it never works out that way. Believe me, I’ve tried. Besides, if there’s any chance of me having fun that night, it’ll be with you.”

He sat back into his couch as he absorbed that statement.

“Can’t say I didn’t warn you…” she chirped brightly. “So, I’ll pick you up at seven on Saturday, okay?”

“Yeah… sure…”

“Thanks, Reid. And, again, you really are the best.”

It took him nearly thirty seconds to realize she’d hung up on him.


	7. Chapter 7

As they pulled into the circular drive that led to the Ambassador’s home, Reid felt trepidation for the first time. It was as intimidating a place as the woman herself. Perhaps this wasn’t such a good idea. He’d wanted to do this for Prentiss - truth be told, he’d probably seriously consider swimming with crocodiles if she asked him - but it suddenly felt as if he were setting himself up for a test that he was doomed to fail from the outset. Not to mention that he couldn’t shake the idea that showing up to this event as Prentiss’s arm candy sent out an unconscious message to her mother about the nature of her association with Reid; an association that didn’t actually exist. Well, at least he’d worn one of his good suits for the occasion. Prentiss’s pupils had dilated appreciably when she’d seen him in it at his apartment; she told him that he ‘cleaned up good’. He stifled the thrill it gave him and instead funneled it into his compliment about her dress, which was breathtaking and would’ve made him fit to burst. You know, if this had been an actual date or something. 

The car stopped and he must’ve been staring at the impressive façade because after a long moment he felt her hand land on his arm and squeeze until he looked at her.

“Listen, I know it’s a bit daunting, but trust me, she’s just a person. They all are, regardless of rank or privilege. Just… be who you are because you can’t change their prejudices and attitudes by being someone else, right?”

“Right.” He didn’t feel confident about that.

“Besides,” she smirked at him, eyes twinkling in the lights coming from the main foyer. “I came from this environment and managed to turn out only 30% asshole…”

“30%? Are you sure? Has this result been audited by an impartial third party?”

She swatted his shoulder. “Get out of the car, you jerk.”

They handed off Prentiss’s car to the valet and she walked to his side slotting herself beside him as if it were her assigned place. Her arm looped through his, hand stroking the fabric of his coat lightly as she propelled them into the house.

“You’re my friend. You look great. And you are completely awesome,” she murmured and fixed a dazzlingly fake smile to her face. “You _own_ this, Spencer Reid.”

“Are you trying to convince me or yourself?”

“I’ve never had to convince myself that you are the best.” She said it without looking at him and before he could respond they were inside and being relieved of their coats and ushered into a massive room full of guests wearing ridiculous formal wear and too much jewelry.

They milled around for several minutes. Prentiss knew many of the guests and greeted some with genuine affection and others with thinly veiled contempt. Reid watched her reactions in between the quiet murmurings that were required as he was introduced; her extremes were fascinating and gave him more insight into this life that she rarely talked about. The people she appreciated seemed erudite and self-aware enough to understand their value and purpose within the room. The others usually presented as hollow shells or ciphers disguising their intent in a way that was simultaneously obvious and impenetrable. Reading all of this in a matter of minutes was exhausting and Reid found himself wondering what it must have been like for her to grow up like this, thinking that _this_ was how the whole world acted day in and day out.

Ambassador Prentiss suddenly appeared before them radiant, imperial, perfect down to the last detail. She smiled as her gaze swept over Reid from head to toe, taking everything in. It was only then that he realized the Ambassador had expected her to come alone. 

“Emily.”

“Hi Mom.”

She stared at her daughter as she had just stared at Reid. “Chanel?” she finally said.

“Vintage Dior, actually.”

“Stunning.” Her eyebrows lifted ever so slightly. “Who’s your guest?”

“Mom, you remember my colleague, Dr. Reid?”

Reid offered his hand and nodded.

“Oh, yes. Another one of Aaron’s agents. Forgive my lapse, Dr. Reid. At my age, I only have enough room in this aging head of mine for the faces that I _must_ remember.”

Wow. She’d belittled him and rendered him irrelevant in two sentences. This was going to be fun.

“Mother…” Prentiss warned and the Ambassador waved her off.

“It’s fine, Emily, but I wish you’d informed me that you were bringing a guest. I went and invited Marco for you, and now the table shall be uneven.”

“ _Mother!_ ”

“You’ll just have to be twice as charming, I suppose.” The Ambassador smiled benevolently. “Entertaining two young men with your sparkling repartee. I’m sure you’re up to it, dear. Splendid to have you with us, Doctor… Excuse me, but I have to say hello to everyone before we sit down.”

And she wandered away in all of her state. Reid blinked and then looked to Prentiss who was seething quietly, watching her mother move through the crowd.

“Who’s Marco?”

“He’s Mother’s idea of a subtle hint.” Reid felt like that didn’t explain anything and when she looked at him, she elaborated. “He’s the former Italian Ambassador’s son. We knew each other in Italy as teenagers - we went on a handful of dates, mostly out of desperation to get out of our respective embassies.” 

“Ah,” Reid nodded. “A suitable candidate. I see.”

“Yeah. Aside from being diplomats’ children, and both being sixteen and rebellious at the same time, we didn’t have much in common. I doubt that’s changed in the intervening years.” Prentiss drained her champagne and then moved a little closer to Reid’s side, placing a hand along his back that made him take extra notice. “It doesn’t matter - it’s just a ploy. Mom likes to play with me at these things. She has no more regard for Marco than for those faces that she can’t remember.”

Prentiss smiled, a secret, familiar smile that warmed him unexpectedly.

“I’m really glad you’re here. I can sorta let go of how irritating her game is knowing that I have someone I can actually talk to next to me tonight.” 

Reid stood up a little straighter. The warmth sliding through his belly flared and sharpened his edges, made him feel taller somehow. He’d never been anyone’s social savior before - even the idea seemed laughable given who he was. But now he’d been given that task and he found himself wanting to do everything he could to be her sword and shield at this event. It was a ludicrous impulse and it felt absolutely alien and wonderful.

“Whatever you need,” he murmured and her eyes flashed to him just as a servant bade the party move into the banquet room. 

They sat, watching the party align itself to the long table in what must have been an intricately nuanced and complex seating arrangement. Reid was next to Prentiss, and then a tall, swarthy man with a brilliant smile and slightly graying hair appeared at her other side.

“Emily,” he enthused warmly as he spread his arms wide. “Bella.”

Prentiss smiled and offered her cheek for a kiss, nothing more. “Marco. You look well.”

“Not as well as you, Bella. The years have been far kinder to you, as I knew they would be.” Marco looked over at Reid and then smoothly extended his hand. “And you must be the cause. You are a lucky man, sir.”

Reid made some choking noises and found himself unable to do much but shake Marco’s hand and beg for help from Prentiss with his eyes.

“This is Spencer Reid. He’s a friend.”

“Not your husband?” Marco’s eyebrows rose. “I just assumed… how is it possible that no man has claimed you yet, Bella? Perhaps there’s still hope for me.”

Marco sat, smile getting brighter and more brilliant by the second.

“There’s no hope for any man who seeks to ‘claim’ me,” Prentiss smirked. “I’m not the marrying kind.”

Reid felt as if he’d been slapped. He looked away from them both and focused on the elaborate place setting in front of him. She _had_ married someone… even if it was only for a brief time and half-consciously… He shook his head and decided to lose himself in the din of conversation that was growing around the table. The first course was served and then the second before he felt a hand on his knee, squeezing gently. He looked up and found her gazing at him with concern.

“You okay?” she whispered.

“Sure.”

“Maybe this was a bad idea. I know that you hate large groups of strangers… I was selfish to ask…”

But she had asked, and she could’ve asked anyone. Morgan or Rossi or even Hotch perhaps - they all would’ve been more suitable. But she asked _him_ and he _wanted_ to be her shield. He moved a hand to cover hers on his knee.

“I’m fine.” He smiled and leaned in closer than a friend would knowing that others at the table would notice. He hoped that Marco saw it. “What do you want me to do? Who do you want me to be? Tell me.”

She blinked and he saw colour rise in her face before she answered. “I want you to be who you are when it’s just us… nothing more.”

Well, that was a complicated answer because who they were had varied wildly. His Vegas memories were knocking on the door of his consciousness but he leaned against it and wouldn’t let them in, not now. He’d been a very different man that night and he wasn’t sure he could be that way again in the light of day, and certainly not in the twinkling light of Ambassador Prentiss’s banquet hall. But he wondered, as he stared at Prentiss in her exquisite dress amongst the privileged and well-heeled crowd, how she’d react if he ever tried to be that man again with her. He leaned in until his shoulder brushed hers.

“I told you I’d be whoever you want tonight.”

“Doctor Reid,” The Ambassador’s voice rang above the other conversations and brought him out of his trance with Prentiss. “I’ve never been able to get Emily to adequately describe what she does at the Bureau. Perhaps you could enlighten me?”

The Ambassador was staring at him strangely from her seat at the end of the table, as if he were something curious and exotic whose behavior was entirely mysterious.

“Well,” he cleared his throat and found himself to be the sudden focus of the table’s attention. “Both Emily and I are profilers in a division that focuses on serial, aberrant crimes. Each unit member is distinguished in an aspect of psychology, criminology, or law enforcement in order to be chosen - above and beyond the Bureau’s usual requirements. Almost all of us have advanced degrees of some kind. It’s a very different division - specialized, elite even. We are a part of the FBI but also… set apart.”

“That explains it.” A balding man that Reid remembered was introduced as a member of the Federal Armed Services Committee pointed at him. “No offense, Doctor, but you don’t _look_ like a typical FBI agent.”

“It’s true: I don’t fall into the physical cliché of a federal law enforcement agent. But a typical agent might miss the floating knuckle on your right hand or dismiss the fact that your nose has been broken more than once and decide, based solely on the girth of your waistline, that you are merely a political bureaucrat and not a man who boxes regularly as part of a health regimen and also as a hold over of routine from some branch of military service. Army, perhaps?”

“Air Force.” The balding man’s eyebrows rose as he nodded once in approval.

“My point is that physical intimidation is not a primary asset of our work, which allows for my inclusion.”

“And Emily’s,” the Ambassador added.

Reid felt Prentiss stiffen at his side and he leapt in before she could work up a retort for her mother.

“Our team has members like me, Ambassador, and members who can fight and shoot and dare their way in and out of impossible situations. And then it has agents like your daughter, who has the rare and enviable ability to do all of those things extremely well.”

“It sounds as though you’re jealous, Doctor…” It was Marco staring at him in real curiosity. 

“I am,” he was answering Marco but looking at the Ambassador to make sure she was listening. “Who wouldn’t want to be as lethal in body as they are with their mind? Truth be told, if the Bureau had more agents as thoroughly capable as Emily, they wouldn’t hire people like me with my obvious deficits.”

Marco huffed, unimpressed. “You’re being purposefully disingenuous now…”

“Yes, he is…” Prentiss murmured as she gave Reid a questioning stare.

“If your department at the FBI is as elite as you suggest,” Marco continued. “I find it difficult to believe that they would keep someone on who has, as you say, ‘obvious deficits’. It seems as though you’re downplaying your skills to us in a lateral attempt to flatter Emily here tonight.”

“She doesn’t require my flattery here or anywhere else. She made her reputation in this field long before we met and her record of accomplishment stands for itself without endorsement from anyone.”

“Well, that’s certainly… decorous of you.” Marco sat back in his chair with a strange half-smile on his face.

“How do you mean?”

“What I mean is, considering Emily’s abilities and your admitted deficits, and that you are both considered to be of equal rank or value within your work, Emily’s accomplishments _do_ , in fact, rest partially on the general good opinion of others, don’t they? When was the last time that you had to curry favor with a superior in order to advance in your career, Doctor? I’ll wager that it’s never even crossed your mind. That’s because you’re a man doing man’s work - you are expected to succeed if given the opportunity. But Emily’s value will always come from others, not from her actions, because she is a woman and men always see her gender first.”

Prentiss whipped her head around to face Marco and Reid was glad not to be on the receiving end of whatever look she was giving him at that moment. From the corner of his eye, Reid saw the Ambassador lean back in her chair and lay a finger across her lips at the interaction. She clearly wasn’t going to say anything but he got the feeling that the conversation wasn’t over by a long shot. 

“Of course, it’s an unfortunate truth,” Marco continued, looking a little abashed. “And it’s not one I espouse myself-”

“What a remarkably silly thing to say and it flies in the face of over a hundred years of women’s rights efforts.” Reid rushed forward in the way he did when he wasn’t thinking about the social implications of the things tumbling out of his mouth. “Especially given the achievements of the two senators, the 2-star general, the constitutional lawyers and scholars, the Georgetown professor, the cardiac surgeon, and the seven congressional members in attendance at this dinner, not to mention the accomplished diplomat at the head of this table. All women - all working in male-dominated fields.”

The table fell silent and Reid felt redness seep into his cheeks as all eyes focused on him.

“Whether men saw their gender first or not is irrelevant. They have all succeeded, regardless.”

“Well said.” A small voice broke the silence, and Reid looked up the table to see the woman sitting next to the balding, former Air Force boxer nod to him. 

“Yes,” The Ambassador mused after another awkward minute of silence. “But I think all of the illustrious women in attendance tonight would attest to the fact that their careers haven’t been easy ones. And Emily’s won’t be either. So, it would appear that both Doctor Reid and Mr. Fratelli’s views have merit.”

The Ambassador took a breath and gave the table a knowing grin. “You’d think that women would’ve found a way to achieve without so much effort by now. Just as men have.”

A relieved titter rose from the group at her statement, glad for the opportunity to slide away from the topic at hand. Prentiss was still thrumming beside Reid, her hand clamped to his knee. She obviously hadn’t absorbed what he said and had focused instead on the perceived slights from her mother and Marco. It suddenly seemed so obvious to Reid why these two women didn’t get along and it had nothing to do with animosity. The conversation moved on to another topic and Reid smiled to himself as his realization flowered in his mind. He wondered if he should tell Prentiss, or if she’d be too closed off to hear it. The third course appeared in front of him, breaking his revelry, and forced him to look up: the Ambassador was staring at him and returning his secret smile. 

~~~~

Prentiss kept her cool until the dessert course but after that she was done. 

“Let’s blow this pop stand,” she leaned into him and whispered.

“Are you sure? You haven’t flirted with Marco at all… that’s no way to bag a husband, young lady…”

Her eyes narrowed in mock-anger. “You’ve changed. I should leave you here and _you_ can make a society marriage with Marco. Give him lots of swarthy, genius babies…”

“I have your permission? ‘Cause, honestly, he’s dreamy…”

That broke her and she made an undignified snort that she had to work hard to cover. He grinned at her and she pinched him through his jacket.

“Meet me in the front hall, Romeo. If you can tear yourself away from the Italian Stallion, that is…”

She rose gracefully and made her exit with as few goodbyes as she could politely manage. Reid got up a moment later and followed; no one seemed to care if he left or not. He wandered through the mess of rooms between the banquet hall and the front foyer, weaving amongst the smattering of guests who had already left the table for less cluttered spaces. Reid imagined intrigues with international ramifications forming over tiny cups of coffee in the corners of the grand house. He wasn’t interested - he just wanted to take Prentiss and go home. He found her in the hall looking anxiously for him, and when she caught sight of him she mouthed the words ‘going to get the coats’ before she disappeared into the maze of the house once more. There was nothing for him to do but wait.

Just as Emily abandoned him to find their coats, Ambassador Prentiss appeared beside him. He had to stifle his instinct to flinch as she turned into him with her professional diplomat’s smile anchored to her face.

“I must say that this evening has been most… entertaining. Far more so than when Emily usually graces us with her presence. I expected a night of her usual pouting, but you two put on quite a show.”

Reid felt as though he should respond but had absolutely no idea what to say to that, mostly because it felt a little insulting.

“She made a good choice with you, Dr. Reid,” the Ambassador pressed on. “You make an amusing, if slightly offbeat, couple, I must admit.”

“Oh… Ambassador,” Reid stammered and looked around frantically for Prentiss. “You are mistaken… Emily and I are j-just colleagues… friends, even.”

“ _Of course_ I know that, young man. She never brings anyone whom she’s really interested in to one of these things.”

“Oh?” Reid’s chest did a sudden tight squeeze. “Oh.”

“But you survived us.” The Ambassador turned to face him and this time she stared critically with an inscrutable and un-diplomatic smirk curling her lips. “And you _do_ make an amusing, if slightly offbeat, couple.”

It felt as though the conversation had more meaning than his terrified brain could parse at that moment. He just ended up staring back at Prentiss’s formidable mother and demanded with his eyes that she start making more sense. “Ma’am?”

“She usually doesn’t care about the victims that she throws under the bus at these get-togethers, so I find it interesting that she brought a co-worker. The very nature of your connection means that you _aren’t_ disposable.”

“Ambassador, with respect,” Reid felt his anger rising, which was usually an unwise impulse. “There’s far more to your daughter than this bizarre generational rivalry that you two have established. And perhaps you have both lost sight of the unassailable fact that you mirror one another’s personalities in almost every way, both good and bad. Though she’s loathed to admit it, all she wants is your regard, and given what lengths you go to in order to goad her, I suspect you want the same from her… and neither one of you seems to get that the foundation of that desire is rooted in the respect that you secretly hold for one another. It’s so Freudian and circular that it makes my brain hurt.”

The Ambassador’s smirk disappeared and Reid felt himself go cold all over as she just stared him down. _Way to go, genius - that’s gonna fix everything, isn’t it?_

“Freud is your frame of reference here?” she said eventually. “His theories are antiquated and disproven.”

“Well, he wasn’t wrong about absolutely everything, and I’m not wrong about this either.” 

He was amazed that the statement came out sounding as confident as it did. The Ambassador continued to stare and then, after an excruciating length of silence, she bent in closer to him.

“How long have you been in love with my daughter, Doctor?”

Reid felt his mouth fall open ungraciously, and snapped it shut to avoid looking like a stuffed marlin. He dropped his gaze, no longer confident enough to bluster, and then he heard her sigh.

“You needn’t answer - the question was for your benefit, not mine. For what it’s worth, Dr. Reid, my pride in Emily cannot be measured. She is so much more than I expected, so much stronger than I was at her age.”

Reid looked up and saw the Ambassador staring into the distance, the lines in her face softened for the first time all evening.

“I disapprove of the law enforcement thing because it terrifies me; I couldn’t stand losing her. But I know she’s very good at it and I have to admit that if I’d had her kind of balls growing up, I’d probably have made a similar career choice. And it tickles the feminist in me that she can take on almost anyone, whether it be physically or mentally. I’d hate to be an obstacle in her way…”

She laughed lightly and Reid heard an echo of Emily in it.

“But I worry that she pushes too hard, that she thinks her career is everything. Just like I did. We aren’t close because I never made time for love in my life… it was always about my next posting, the next crisis, the next rung on the ladder. I don’t want her to be like me in that respect.”

She turned to face him again. “I was an expert at denying love, and I want more for my child than that - like any loving parent would. I can’t seem to get that across to her, so maybe you could help me, Doctor.”

“Help you?”

“Keep an eye out for her on the job, because even though she’s very good at it, all it takes is one, lucky bullet.”

“You don’t have to ask me to look out for her. I already do - we all do.”

“I know, but a reminder is never a bad thing.” The Ambassador sighed. “All I want is for Emily to be safe and loved. As a parent, there comes a heart-wrenching moment when you realize that what you want for your child’s life is beyond your ability to provide. She’s an adult and she makes her own choices. Sometimes I put obstacles in her way to remind her that there are things in life beyond what she’s chosen for herself.”

Reid waited a moment. “Like Marco.”

The Ambassador gave him a tired look. “Please. Marco would never be suitable for her. All he wants is someone to have children with. That might be enough for some women, but not Emily. She needs a partner - someone who wants her mind as well as her body, someone who would protect her even from herself. Men like Marco are so… common. Women like Emily are not, even if I am biased.”

She smiled gently and then laid a pale hand on Reid’s shoulder. “Marco is an object lesson and a plea. She gets the lesson loud and clear - she’d never choose that kind of man - but she doesn’t hear my plea. I don’t want her to let love pass her by because… she’s scared or she’s worried about what it might mean…”

The Ambassador stopped briefly and swallowed, seemingly lost in her thoughts. “She’s so much like me, and yet she doesn’t know how much I loved her father. He changed me, made me stronger for loving him. I needed him like oxygen. I wouldn’t have become half the woman I am without that. But when I lost him… well, maybe the woman I became afterwards is all she can see in me.”

She refocused on Reid again. “I want that kind of love for her, Doctor. And when you finally decide to tell her, you have my blessing.”

The hand squeezed once and then she turned abruptly, walking back in the direction of the party.

“T-tell her what?” he called after her with what little breath he had control over.

“Yes, Doctor, your offbeat-ness is definitely amusing…” The Ambassador responded without looking back.

A few moments later, Prentiss appeared with their coats and her thunderous look from dinner, but it melted in the sight of Reid’s blinking, gap-mouthed puzzlement.

“What’s the matter?”

“Your mother…” he whispered.

“Yeah?” Prentiss cocked one hand on her hip after she offered him his coat, as if preparing for another assault.

“… she freaks me out a little.”

Prentiss hooted suddenly and it echoed through the grand hallway. She wrapped her arm around his shoulder and gave him a bolstering shake.

“Don’t worry - she does that to everyone. Count yourself lucky that you’re leaving this house with all of your limbs in tact. She must like you or something…”

“Or something,” he mumbled.

“C’mon, let’s go get something _real_ to eat… something without a glaze or jus or tiny vegetables carved like flowers on it, okay? And maybe a stiff drink, or six.”

“Yeah,” Reid sighed, still befuddled by the evening’s events. “I could really use a drink too.”

~~~~

They’d bought milkshakes and greasy food, and headed back to Prentiss’s condo. She kicked off her heels and he loosened his tie as they stretched out on her balcony overlooking downtown. She’d found a dusty bottle of whiskey in her kitchen and had been liberally dosing their shakes with it as they chilled and munched and generally sighed in relief from the evening. D.C. twinkled in the distance, beautiful and oblivious to anyone’s problems - it was almost as refreshing as the cool night air.

She looked over at Reid, stretched out in his thin, dark suit absently eating a french fry. It felt as though she ought to apologize again for her mother, Marco, or maybe just the whole evening, but he’d borne it with a grace she hadn’t expected. In fact, _he_ hadn’t been what she expected at all. He’d been quiet on the way back, and he was quiet now, but she couldn’t forget how he’d spoken about her at dinner. There was pride there, and she didn’t know why but that had genuinely shocked her. She was his friend but she never knew that he thought so highly of her - it sorta made her nervous, as if she didn’t want to let him down now that she knew it. And then there was the way he’d told her that he’d be whatever she needed him to be that night. She knew she’d blushed at it and she could feel the heat rising in her face again at the memory - she couldn’t help it. The prepossession, trust, and affection that demonstrated undid her a little.

The breeze lifted his hair from his face as he ate another fry still lost in his thoughts. The lights below outlined his features and she suddenly had the notion that this had all happened before: the affectionate camaraderie, the escape, this shared moment in the dark high above the lights and bustle of the city below… She felt a pull to go to him, to draw her hands over the lines of his suit, to edge the contours of his face, to watch the look in his eyes change from surprise to something warmer.

She abruptly put her milkshake down and pushed the whiskey bottle away. _No more booze for you, girl…_

“Are you all right?”

She looked back and saw him staring, brow furrowed with concern that she’d seen a thousand times in the years she’d known him. Just friendly concern, nothing more.

“Yeah,” she sighed. “Nothing that carbo-loading and good company can’t fix, right?”

“Yeah.” He smiled back at her, wide and grateful, and she allowed herself to enjoy the tingling it produced even if she didn’t understand why it was happening in the first place.


	8. Chapter 8

They sat around the conference table mired in stacks of quarterly case files and consult requests. Despite the clutter and the belief that closeting them all in the same room together might lessen the dreariness of the task, everyone acted as if they were alone with only the sound of scribbling and paper shuffling to punctuate the silence. 

Reid’s back hurt. He took a moment from his Goodhue case notes to realize that he had allowed himself to curl into a truncated S in his chair. He thought about the times that Emily had told him he had the posture of a stoned jellyfish, and straightened, making an impressive crack as he did so. His gaze flicked to her across the table and found her peering back over her own paperwork. She raised an eyebrow.

_Okay?_

He sighed and nodded, then raised his own brow questioningly. _You?_

Prentiss rolled her eyes dramatically and then stretched, holding the pose as if it were the best feeling ever. He smirked and then watched her sag back into her chair as her eyes settled on all of the case files she hadn’t touched yet. She made a frustrated burble with her lips as she stared at the pile and it made him want to grin like an idiot because he suddenly had a mental image of a six-year-old version of Emily writing case notes across from him, doodling in the margins. 

Her eyes flicked to her coffee mug and then back to the file stack, and he knew what she was thinking: _Will more coffee help at all?_ He had an idea and rummaged through his bag on the seat next to him until he hit pay dirt. He turned back and saw her watching him with interest, and then he slid the foil-wrapped package to her across the table top with a smile of triumph. Her hand closed over the half-eaten bar of her favorite chocolate brand (which had coincidentally become his as well) as she uttered a surprised ‘mmmm’ noise. She quickly unwrapped the gift, broke off a piece, and popped it into her mouth giving him a grateful smile in the process. _You’re the best._ He felt his face heat a little and shrugged as his gaze flicked from his paperwork and then back to her again. _It was nothing, really…_ She knocked the table once lightly with her knuckles and then pointed to him in response. _I owe you one._ He started to chuckle, looking away from her for the first time when he realized that everyone was staring at them. His chuckle died in his throat turning into a panicked cough instead as he looked at the communal surprise of the team.

“What?” he sputtered.

J.J.’s face was blank as if she were trying to hide a reaction. Morgan just looked confused. Rossi was smirking as he leaned back in his chair, like no one could show him something he hadn’t seen before. And Hotch was scowling, which could mean absolutely anything.

“You two have been working together too long,” Hotch said eventually.

“What does _that_ mean?” Emily looked a little worried, and suddenly he was too.

“You realize that you guys just had a full-on conversation without saying an actual word out loud, don’t you?” Morgan gestured between them. “It was weird.”

“Well, uh, yeah.” Reid waved the observation away. “But weird _useful_ , right? Not weird _creepy_ …”

“Sure,” Rossi rocked back in his seat as he smiled. “Let’s go with that.”

“Maybe it’s time for a break.” Hotch gave them both an inscrutable look before pushing away from the conference table himself. “We’ve all been here too long. Let’s get something to eat before we all have to resort to raiding the depths of Reid’s bag.”

The group made a grateful sigh and then formed a meandering line out of the conference room and into the bullpen. Rossi offered a ride to a local Italian place he loved and J.J. made a cheer as Morgan set off to collect Garcia for the outing. Reid caught up with Prentiss in the doorway but felt awkward about what the team said. He found that he was having trouble looking at her. Her arm settled around his shoulders and gave them a squeeze.

“It’s totally weird _useful_.” She smiled when he looked at her, and he felt himself lean into her a little as she did so. “Don’t worry.”

“‘Kay, good. I’m not sure that I’m comfortable with raising my weirdness rating any higher than it already is.”

Prentiss chuckled and then offered him the last square of chocolate as they shuffled toward the elevators. “I don’t think that you could ever get too weird for me.”

He felt warm all over, melting into her statement as the chocolate melted on his tongue. Her arm slid away to press the elevator call button, but the sensation of connection remained, wrapping him up in an unfamiliar assurance. He sighed as he followed her onto the elevator.


	9. Chapter 9

Reid flipped through the report in the folder that the coroner just handed him. He absorbed it quickly while the guy spoke, and then placed it on an instrument table before joining Prentiss as she stared down at the body.

“No sign of sexual assault,” he said to no one in particular. That was a small mercy, he supposed. Prentiss flinched ever so slightly beside him, but he noticed.

“No,” the coroner answered. “And no signs of repeated stranglings and resuscitations either. No evidence that he kept her confined for any length of time before he killed her… honestly, Doctor, I don’t see how this matches up with the pattern of the other victims.”

“It doesn’t,” Prentiss mumbled. “But she knew the last victim, and there’s no such thing as coincidence.”

Her tone told him she was distracted, but the way she was staring at Anne Marsden’s body was ferocious. And that’s when he noticed her body language in its totality: her stance was rigid, turned away from both him and the coroner, and her face was a bland mask of indifference, except for her eyes. She’d been quiet on the drive over after they got the call, but he hadn’t seen any of this until _right now_ and he suddenly felt horrible that his impressive brain had ignored it all.

“If you say so, Agent,” the coroner said, and Prentiss trained her glare on him instead. “You’re the ones with the credentials but my forensic, medical opinion is that this is just a garden variety murder. Nothing like the guy you’re looking for.”

Reid sighed to himself; coroners weren’t known for their people skills, and coming from him, that was saying something. He could feel an angry energy radiating from Prentiss, and so he decided to take things in hand.

“Would it be possible to have the room for a minute, Doctor Sanaaz?”

The coroner looked at him with offense. “The parents are coming in an hour. I have to clean her up before they get here.”

“I understand. Just a minute though…”

Dr. Sanaaz huffed, making sure that his displeasure was obvious, and then left without a word leaving the medical bay doors swinging behind him. Prentiss watched the doors settle, and then turned her focus back to Anne without acknowledging Reid at all. He gave her a minute, to see if she’d initiate the conversation, but then decided that they didn’t have that kind of time on their hands.

“What’s going on in there, Prentiss?” he said quietly. “I need to know.”

He watched her eyebrows lower as she stared even harder, as if she could see through the Y incision into the dead girl’s heart.

“I talked to her two days ago,” she said eventually. “She wasn’t even scared. Most people who are tangentially related to a violent crime are scared… it’s normal… but she wasn’t. Her best friend had just been brutally murdered and she was just… _pissed_.”

He looked down at what remained of Anne Marsden, twenty-three year old college student with a 4.0 GPA and what he could imagine had been a winning smile, and thought that being angry about murder was a pretty ballsy response for someone like that. It reminded him of someone else.

“And I thought,” Prentiss continued. “She has every right to be pissed off. She had every right to hold us accountable for what happened to her friend. She didn’t care about how it affected her; she just wanted to know what we planned to do about it. I liked her.”

Her voice cracked over the last sentence and he moved closer so that their shoulders were brushing one another. Then he went to work.

“There was nothing to suggest that she was in any danger. Nothing in the profile, nothing in the pattern of evidence from the previous killings indicated that the UnSub ever revisited associates of his victims.”

She rounded on him, furious. “And yet, she’s dead.”

“And short of the Hail Mary probability of catching him before he got to her, there was nothing we could do to stop it.” He glared back at her. “She wasn’t important, Prentiss. She hadn’t witnessed anything - at best, she provided background information about her friend. I mean… _look_ at her: even the UnSub discounted her. There’s no planning here, no enjoyment, no process at work. She’s just a message to us… like some quick ‘look what I did’ note scribbled out on scrap paper. She’s nothing.”

Prentiss’s entire body hardened as her anger boiled and coloured her face. She didn’t say anything and he’d rarely seen her too enraged for words. He swallowed hard and stayed the course: his strategy was working.

“How angry are you right now?” he asked as he stepped into her, chin lifted in defiance.

“Pretty fucking angry,” she bit out.

“Do you want to hit me for calling her nothing?”

She twitched as an odd mix of rage, confusion, and indecision rippled across her. Her eyes flicked down, away from his, and then returned a moment later, conflict tightening the lines around them.

“I won’t hit you.”

“You could. I can take it,” he murmured and then snatched up her hand in his. “Or we could pull it together and _use_ it to nail this guy. And I’m telling you, Prentiss, I want to hunt him down so badly now that I can taste it - it’s like… blood in my mouth.”

Her eyes widened and her lips parted, fury suddenly draining from her. Her fingers tightened around his at their sides.

“The prevailing wisdom is that you need to disassociate, to be dispassionate to do this job.” He leaned in a little closer to her. “But some cases strip that away from you, don’t they?”

She nodded.

“There’s no way back to that safe ground on this one; we’re _involved_ now. So, we can either lash out blindly… at stupid coroners, at the choices we didn’t make, at this faceless man who thinks it’s fun to play at death… Or we can put that terrible energy to good use and do justice to Anne Marsden’s attitude towards her murderer. What do you want to do?”

Her eyes flicked all over his face, as if she’d never seen him before, and it wasn’t lost on him that she quickly looked to his lips and then licked hers. Heat flashed through him but he pushed it aside; anger was very close to passion, but they had a job to do and he was just trying to bring her back to it. He didn’t catalogue all of the things he’d give to have her _this worked up_ over him, for his own merits.

“I’ve never heard you talk like this,” she breathed.

“Anne’s not nothing, Emily - I’m mad about this too. But I can’t do it alone. I need someone who understands how I feel and will help me anyway… in spite of conventional wisdom. Will you help me?”

“Yes.” The answer seemed to shock her, but then she nodded to confirm it. “Yes, I will. But, Reid… I want you to know that I see what you just did here… how you manipulated me…”

He held his breath and thought about letting go of her hand, but she moved away first until it was impossible for them to touch.

“Emily, I-”

She waved her hand to silence him. “Thank you. You’re damned good at it.”

He blushed and looked to his sneakers, embarrassed, but she’d already turned back to the body.

“Did Dr. Sanaaz collect any trace evidence that might suggest where she was killed?” she asked evenly.

They went back to work.

~~~~

Well, they’d done it - they’d caught the asshole, and before he could claim someone else. Anne Marsden had been his last victim. They’d worked at a pace that seemed frantic even by the team’s elevated standards, but it had paid off. And Prentiss even had the honor of killing him. Was honor the right word? Probably not, and it certainly didn’t feel like justice or closure or satisfaction as she sat in the Bethlehem PD staring at her case file as random cops and agents passed her and offered their congratulations on a job well done.

All she could see was the Y incision on Anne’s chest. All that she could think about was that Anne’s final memories were of fear and pain, and nothing Prentiss had done would ever change that.

She felt a hand wrap around hers where it rested against the file folder on the desk in front of her. She looked up and saw Reid staring at her with an odd, lost look of his own.

“C’mon,” he murmured. “I want to show you something I found.”

They were supposed to pack up and head out to the local airfield, but she rose and followed him as if she didn’t have a choice. He moved her that way sometimes, but she’d decided a long time ago not to investigate that too closely. Instead she focused on his hand around hers as he led her to the back of the station house; his hand was so warm.

He pulled her through a dingy hallway beyond the interrogation room of the tiny police station, and then through an unmarked door that Prentiss would’ve assumed was just an emergency exit. But it opened out into a small garden behind the building, sheltered from view on three sides by mature jack pines. Someone had taken some effort to build flowerbeds from the rolling land and the natural stones that peeked through the soil. Hardy perennials stood their ground while spring crocuses and a few random tulips braved the early thaw to provide some color. Reid directed Prentiss to a bench at the far end of the garden, well away from the building, and waited for her to sit. There was a small brass plaque on the bench with a woman’s name on it that meant nothing to her. He sat next to her, still holding her hand, and watched the jack pine branches weaving in the wind.

“I didn’t know this was here,” she murmured when it seemed as though he wouldn’t say anything.

“I found it three days after we got here. I try and find a place everywhere we go where I can be alone if I need it,” he said, and it felt like he was telling her a secret. “People have taken care of this garden, but I’ve never seen anyone out here. Maybe you can’t admit to being a cop and a gardener in this town.”

She wasn’t sure if he was trying to be funny but she chuckled anyway. His gaze flicked to hers and then down to his shoes, but his mouth curled into a small smile.

“It’s nice,” she said. “Quiet. I like that.”

“Yeah. I like listening to the wind in the trees - it sorta balances out my own turbulence.”

She looked at him then and saw how tired he was. There were deep shadows under his eyes and his expression seemed more careworn, his posture more compacted than usual. He’d told her that this case was personal for him but she hadn’t really noticed that until now. The lifeless look on Anne’s face dimmed a little in Prentiss’s mind as she thought that Reid might be haunted by it as well.

“I did some digging. About Esther McClintoch,” he flicked a finger at the plaque on the bench when she looked confused. “It turns out that she was the wife of Chief McClintoch who was police chief in this town for thirty-two years.”

Prentiss thought it was odd that there was a memorial to the police chief’s wife and not the chief himself.

“Apparently, she brought the chief his lunch from home every day, and they sat out here together while he ate it,” Reid continued. “Every day for thirty-two years.”

“Wow,” Prentiss whispered.

“Hmmm,” Reid nodded and went quiet for several minutes. 

He wasn’t a guy who usually made silences feel comfortable, but maybe she was just too weary to find it awkward. She felt heavy all over, flooded with a sense of loss that she couldn’t shake, and yet it didn’t seem as though she had a right to the sadness in the first place - she hadn’t really known Anne Marsden, after all. And even against all of her instincts, there was grief over the man she’d killed. She didn’t know what to do with that.

“I found myself thinking about what they might have spoken of during those lunches - the Chief and his wife.” Reid was still watching the trees, his voice seemed far away. “Perhaps he talked about his cases, his concerns for the community and the men under his command. Or maybe he didn’t share that, maybe he wanted to hear about her day - the things that preoccupied her: how their children were doing in school, gossip from the neighbors, worry for the bills and their home…”

She looked at him, wondering how much time he’d spent imagining this couple’s life. She thought it said a lot about him that he found the details of a small town police chief’s history to be that compelling.

“Maybe they didn’t talk at all. Maybe she brought him his lunch and they sat next to each other quietly, and they both knew that was enough - it was what they both needed.”

His voice hitched a little and he stopped talking again. She felt her sadness rear up inside threatening to flatten her as it came ashore. Tears pricked her eyes and she blinked hard and fast to keep them at bay. She was breathing too quickly all of a sudden, as if losing control over the moment were inevitable. She didn’t want to break in front of him, but a part of her whispered that it would be okay if she did. She squeezed his fingers where they still gripped her hand, and tried to banish the image of Anne from her mind once again.

“Did it make you feel any better?” He asked it so quietly that it was nearly lost on the wind, but she knew exactly what he was asking about.

“No,” she choked and couldn’t go on. 

Anne’s face in her mind was replaced by the UnSub’s eyes frozen into a last look of surprise when she’d caught him and _ended_ him. Her satisfaction had only lasted a split second - probably as much time as it took his brain to realize that his heart had stopped beating - and then the inexplicable grief had welled up so sharply that it left her stunned and breathless with her gun still drawn. Reid had been next to her, flanked by Morgan and Rossi, and she’d turned away from them all, ashamed of her guilt, her well of feeling for everyone and everything associated to the case. She was worried about how they’d react - would she read disgust or disbelief in her friends’ faces? Now Reid had brought it all back to the surface and she was terrified of his reaction to it. His opinion was more important than the others - _he_ was more important. She just couldn’t face the prospect of him retreating from her.

“Me neither,” he said suddenly, and when she looked at him, his eyes were glassy as they moved over the garden and his throat worked hard to keep him from saying anything else. 

Something burst with relief in the center of her chest at that expression; he seemed devastated and it matched her own confused, messy internal landscape so completely that her fear transformed into affection in an instant. Maybe it was the first time she understood how much she needed him. He had her back, but it was also something more than that: he _knew_ her as well. She wanted to curl herself around him in that moment, to tell him how much it meant to her to rely on this unspoken connection between them. She wanted to force him to look at her and tell him that what she felt just then seemed immutable, dangerous, and absolutely necessary. 

But they didn’t do that sort of thing.

So, instead she laid her head on his shoulder and let out a deep sigh as she relaxed against him.

“Thank you,” she whispered as she closed her eyes and listened to the wind whistling through the jack pines. 

A moment later, she felt his head come to rest against hers and they sat there on Esther McClintoch’s bench saying nothing more because it was what they both needed.


	10. Chapter 10

Her taxi pulled up in front of Rossi’s place just as Reid exited one of his own. She quickly paid the driver and then hustled out of the car to where he stood peering at the second cab in the twilight.

“Hi!”

He waved at her and smiled as she approached.

“What? No date?”

Reid looked around him, momentarily confused, and then gave her an expression that suggested her question was absurd. “No. Why?”

“You mean why bring a date? Well, only because Rossi always mentions it and by never bringing a guest you constantly set yourself up as the easiest target in the group.”

Reid sighed dramatically while jutting out his elbow for her to link her arm through. She was glad that it was dark out so that she could hide her blush. He did these things automatically; his mother had just raised a polite boy.

“If it wasn’t this it would be something else, Prentiss. Do you know that last Christmas he gave me an anatomically accurate blow-up doll? And it came with an instruction manual for its intended use.”

She stopped walking and stared at him, blown away at Rossi’s disrespectfulness on Reid’s behalf. “That’s just fucking rude. You shoulda said something about that… Dave can go too far sometimes.”

He seemed taken aback by the heat of her response, and he covered her hand that was linked through his arm. “It was fine. I’ve been the recipient of far worse over the years, you know. Rossi always means well in his twisted way. Besides, I had his Mercedes towed to Canada for his trouble.”

Prentiss guffawed and unsuccessfully tried to make it look ladylike. Reid smiled again and they continued walking up the driveway.

“And there were some strangely interesting tips in that manual…”

“Oh my God, you _read_ the manual?” She thought she might guffaw again.

“Never turn down an opportunity to learn, Prentiss. That’s my motto.”

“That image is gonna be in my head all night now.” She was curled around his arm laughing like a hyena. 

“So, you see? Now everyone’s a winner.” 

His grin was huge and she suddenly wanted to feel it under her fingers. Her laughter became less uninhibited as she squashed the impulse.

“How come you never bring a date to these things?” he asked after a moment.

She tried not to react physically to his question. It was flirting with the edge of the subject that they never discussed and she just wished that she could get to a point where she didn’t notice that dividing line anymore. She just wanted to enjoy walking next to him talking about crappy Christmas gifts.

“Oh, you know… it always seems like too much effort.”

He gave her a quizzical look.

“I’ve never been good at dating,” she sighed. “Attraction: yes. Dating: no. It’s all… terribly uncomfortable. The disguises and the gentle lies and all of the subtle signifiers that you have to synthesize… well, hell - don’t we do that enough in our day jobs? Nights like these I just want to relax, to be myself with people I trust. I don’t want to put on a show for anyone, ya know?”

He nodded and then focused on his shoes, hair falling into his face and hiding his reaction from her. 

“I get that,” he said. “Sometimes it feels as though it’s impossible to know anyone.”

They were at Rossi’s front door now standing in the glow given off by the merriment inside. She cocked her head and stared at Reid.

“We know each other, don’t we, Reid?”

He looked up from his feet immediately. “Yes. For the most part, I think.”

“So maybe it’s not so impossible then.”

There it was again: that flirting with the edges of things. She had to stop doing that. She could be casually flirty with everyone else, but she couldn’t do it with Reid. Because that suggestion would always lead back to an actual _thing_ and it wasn’t fair to keep beating that dead horse. Reid just stared back and said nothing.

She turned and rang the doorbell, adjusting herself formally beside Reid as if they were about to walk into the senior prom together. The least she could do tonight would be to keep Rossi off Reid’s back about his perennial bachelorhood. He seemed to get the picture and stood tall next to her while they waited.

“Anyway, why would I bring a date when I already get to hang out with the finest gentleman in the room?”

“Well, yes. I _do_ set the standard unattainably high, don’t I?”

He held a straight face as he gestured to his second-hand jacket and ratty sneakers before they both broke down and smiled at one another. Yep, there wasn’t much in the way of disguises there. By the time Rossi answered his front door, they were laughing hard enough to have erased any other concerns.

~~~~

“We know each other, don’t we, Reid?”

He reached out and pulled her to him. His lips landed on hers, pulling her gasp from her as one of his hands buried itself in her hair. His other arm hooked around her waist and brought her flush against his chest. For a moment, she didn’t seem to know what to do, and then she eased into him, one hand rucking up under his sport coat and the other clutching at the back of his neck. He moaned quietly as he felt her nails skim the edge of his hairline, and she took advantage sinking into him with a satisfied whimper of her own.

She bit his lip, just enough to make him jump, and when he felt her smile against the corner of his mouth, his hands tightened around her. He’d be leaving bruises again, but she didn’t seem to mind that. She rolled up on her toes pushing herself as far into his chest as she could; he could almost feel where her neckline gave way to the fullness of her breasts. He wanted to see but he didn’t dare pull back - it felt like the opposite of what he craved, and that was just _more_. She broke away from his mouth, breathing hard but smiling, wide and surprised.

“I thought you’d forgotten.” Her fingers dug into his skin through his shirt, pulling, demanding, insisting on him…

“I didn’t want to forget.” He breathed it into her mouth and then chased it with a kiss deep enough to make them both unsteady. He was starting to feel mindless, as if he didn’t care if they collapsed in a frantic tangle right there on Rossi’s front porch. His focus had narrowed to her; she was the only thing he wanted anymore.

 

He woke with a gasp that made his throat sore. And he was alone, just like always. His body throbbed beneath the mess of sheets and blankets, desperate for attention that wasn’t coming. He sighed loudly as he squeezed his eyes shut and punched his head back into the pillow.

 _Let. This. Go._ he barked at himself in his mind, but it didn’t seem as though the suggestion would stick. As he’d just admitted in his dream: he didn’t want to forget.


	11. Chapter 11

He cleared the room moments after he heard the shots. S.W.A.T. members, Hotch and Morgan pounced on the UnSub; Rossi collected the traumatized hostage as she ran for the exit. All he could see was Prentiss lying still in the corner and his whole world narrowed to that six-foot space. He tripped and slid into her on his knees as he called her name. She didn’t respond or react as she lay at a crazy angle, blood dripping down the side of her face.

“Emily!” He tried to straighten her but was worried about injuries he couldn’t see. The blood flowing from her head was paralyzing his senses, making it impossible to concentrate on anything else.

 _No, no, no, no…_ How could he have let this happen? He was supposed to look out for her - he was supposed to be her shield. But he wasn’t fast enough or strong enough, and maybe her lucky bullet had found her. If that happened… he couldn’t think about it. He slammed the floor beside her hard, hoping that the vibration would rouse her. He tried again saying her name with more urgency, attempting to make the tone commanding and not terrified.

“Emily, wake up!”

Her chest stuttered suddenly and she took a deep breath before blinking. Her eyes rolled crazily for a moment before fighting to focus. If it weren’t for the blood and bulletproof vest, she might have been waking from a deep sleep.

“Ugh…” She squeezed her eyes shut and then her hand went to her forehead, pulling away with a hiss as she touched the gash.

“Emily?” He bent over her because he felt as if both lungs had just collapsed on him. He wanted to give all of his air to her.

“Hey,” she wheezed and tried to get up until he pushed her back down.

“Stay still.” _For the love of God, Em…_

“What? Why?” She blinked at him and then continued on as he tried to form the words ‘you almost died’. “You okay?”

“Am I-” He stared at her incredulously. “Yes, completely. I’m not the one who narrowly missed being shot in the head.”

“Oh. Good.” She sighed in relief that he found ridiculous. She didn’t appear to have any concern for herself at all. An uncontrollable spike of anger lit him up at her cluelessness - how dare she be so flippant with her life. Didn’t she care at all about consequences or the hurt that she’d leave in her wake? She tried to get up again, and he pushed her back down a little harder than he should have.

“I said, be still! For chrissakes, Emily, you’re bleeding… would it be so hard to just _lie_ there for a moment?”

The anger produced a terrible shaking that he couldn’t disguise. He closed his eyes and let it have him, trying to block out the image of her face looking up at him with dead eyes and blood seeping into her hair.

“Spencer.” Her whisper forced his eyes open and when he saw clarity in her stare he breathed with relief.

He bent closer, the fingers of one hand skimming the edge of the gash, coming away with her blood on his fingertips. His other hand cupped her face as she continued to stare up at him.

“Do you suppose that there’s any way to convince you to become less attracted to danger?” he breathed, horrifically mesmerized by her blood.

She didn’t answer and it broke his hypnosis long enough for him to really look at her. Her expression was almost awestruck, as if she had no idea how to react to him at all. And she was so still under his hands; if he hadn’t felt her breath ghost across him, he might have assumed the worst about her. Then she blinked and a tear slid along her cheekbone and back into her hair mixing with the blood.

“Sorry,” she gulped. “I’ll behave. I’ll just… lie here and watch your pretty face…”

“Pretty face?” Morgan was suddenly kneeling beside him smiling, but with worry in his eyes. “You must be concussed, P.”

“Probably not because I still remember that you owe me twenty bucks from the last Capitals game, Morgan.” 

“ _Definitely_ concussed, then. But at least you’ll get a cool scar out of it.”

“Trust you to focus on what matters, Derek.”

She smiled at Morgan, but her eyes kept flicking back to Reid. He pulled his hands away and she fixed him with a stare that suggested she thought he might disappear on her. The EMTs descended pushing everyone back, and then it felt as if every agent without something better to do was crowding around them. 

Reid allowed himself to become one in the crowd, having lost the will to do anything else. In his mind he was chanting _she’sfineshe’sfineshe’sfine_ and telling himself to get a handle on his anxiety; he just couldn’t seem to shake the image of her pale, still, and dead-eyed under his hands. He couldn’t handle that, not when he had memories of her beautifully vivified in everyway imaginable to compare it to. It wasn’t appropriate to cling to them - he understood that - but on days like today, they helped to keep him sane and he didn’t care what that said about him. 

He watched as the EMTs strapped Prentiss to a stretcher. _Just a precaution_ , he told himself. And then Morgan nudged him and said that they could drive over to the hospital together and wait for them to release her. _Nothing to worry about._ The crowd parted as the medics lifted Prentiss towards the exit and he saw her looking around searching for something while her head was maddeningly immobilized. Her gaze landed on him and she relaxed; the creases around her eyes seemed to soften as if she were smiling. He nodded to her quickly, and then she was gone. And dammit, if he didn’t feel a little bit _better_.

Nothing to worry about.


	12. Chapter 12

“Do you want any more? There’s still a ton of candied yams in the kitchen.”

Prentiss shot Reid a look from where she was draped across his couch like a beached whale. She was stuffed to the gills and the pinot noir had made moving quickly completely out of the question. And she was still trying to wrap her head around the fact that Reid cooked a reasonably good turkey dinner. Spencer “Ramen Noodles and Sugar” Reid…

“You’ve _got_ to be joking.” She arched an eyebrow at him. “I feel as though I’m re-enacting that Monty Python dinner mint sketch.”

He chuckled. “Please don’t explode in my living room. My cleaning skills are questionable at best.”

“I’ll have some more wine though.” 

Prentiss leaned forward with her glass as he went to refill it. She was glad that they’d gotten past the hesitation to drink around one another. It had taken some time to realize that they were safe in each other’s company once again. They’d always been safe, in fact; it had required an outside influence to change that. But still, they’d been cagey about it for nearly a year without really discussing it, and then at some point the obvious must’ve snapped into place for them, and they just let it go. 

Scenes like this made it easier as well. On those Thankgivings, or Christmases, or Easters when Reid couldn’t make it to see his mother, and Prentiss was trying to avoid seeing hers, they’d get together for a low key celebration. Just food and conversation and, tonight, a bit of competitive Scrabble. Reid said that if she could manage to use Q, W, X, Z, and V successfully in one turn, he’d drink the half bottle of port he’d been saving for a special occasion so that Prentiss could mock him as much as she pleased. She was determined to collect on that bet. 

“Where’d you learn to cook a roast, anyway?”

“Mom.” He opened the Scrabble box and began setting up the board. He caught her look of surprise and smiled openly. “What? She wanted me to be self-sufficient.”

“C’mon, Reid, I’ve never seen you eat anything that couldn’t be microwaved. My shock should be expected.”

“Okay, well, I guess that I just don’t see the point in expending the energy if it’s just for me. It’s nicer to cook for someone other than yourself - that way, it feels like a gift, which is what good food ought to be.”

She smiled against the rim of her wine glass. “That’s a nice way to put it. I’ve never really thought of food like that before.”

“My views in this matter are probably like most of my views: a little backward from the average.” He looked up and held out the bag of Scrabble tiles for her to make her selection. “Did you enjoy it?”

“Enjoy it? I ate so much that I’ll be running it off all week. I can barely make toast - having someone cook is a treat. Some day you’ll make a girl incredibly happy to have settled down with someone who can rock a double boiler.”

She reached for the bag but saw that his smile faltered at her words and wondered what she’d done to cause it. “Thank you, Reid,” she added quickly. “I appreciate the effort, and it was certainly much better than when I ordered Thai food last Thanksgiving.”

“My pleasure, Emily.” He smiled, but it was different from before, less joyful. She took a sip of wine to swallow down the sudden dryness she felt in her throat. 

“So, are you ready to marinate yourself in your Tawny 10 Year Old?” She was eager to change the subject but she wasn’t sure what she was hiding from.

“I am supremely confident that my bottle of port will remain unmolested tonight.”

“You know that they say confidence is sexy?”

“Yeah?”

“Well, it isn’t in this case,” she smirked. “You’re going down, Reid.”

“I highly doubt that, but we’ll see.” He laughed as he set up his tiles. “Hope springs eternal.”

“Ass.”

“Crankypants. You go first.”

She laid out her first word and tried scribbling her point total on a pad next to the board. “This pen’s dead. Got another one?”

“Ummm, try one of the upper drawers in the desk behind you…”

She got to her feet unsteadily while he focused on his move. She really ought to watch her drinking, she admonished herself as she walked to the writing desk behind the couch. Just because they were comfortable doing it in each other’s company again didn’t mean that she had to go overboard with it every time. It was like she was trying to establish that she had complete trust in herself, in him. But why did she need to keep proving it? It had been almost two years since Vegas…

The desk was an antique and the first drawer she tried stuck. She gave up and opened the one below it. It was full of carefully ordered stacks of papers and notes. She saw envelopes with a measured script on them and a return address for the Bennington Institute: letters from Reid’s mom, no doubt. Her fingers drifted away from the envelopes and skimmed over a pile of odd little drawings in the opposite corner of the drawer. Strange, spidery ink studies of people and things that held an air of realism but were distorted and elongated in unexpected ways. She smiled; she had no idea that Reid sketched. The drawings were pretty weird but she liked their randomness and their delicate simplicity. Her fingers flipped through them quickly as she tried to soak them in on the sly, and then her fingers stilled as she came to the bottom of the stack. It wasn’t a drawing - it was the fuzzy, faded wedding certificate from Vegas pressed flat and straight against the corner of the drawer. Her breath rattled in her chest as her finger traced the edge of it where the paper had torn and he’d taped it back together.

He’d kept it. One night two years ago that neither of them could remember, but he kept it next to his mother’s letters and his secret drawings. She leaned on the desk with her other hand and stared at the paper. She _knew_ that she still spent too much time trying to figure out that night. It was well past time to give it up - she’d never know - but the curiosity just wouldn’t die. Seeing the sole remaining evidence of it, preserved by Reid, made her think about what he’d said moments earlier about most of his ideas being backward from the average. What if a small part of him couldn’t help being himself that night? What if he’d insisted on getting married before they debauched one another? Could he really have maintained some of his personal beliefs while being drugged beyond reason? If he could, did that mean that she might’ve as well? That put a whole new spin on whether what happened was completely out of character for them… What if there really was more to their friendship than just _friendship_? She started to shake.

“Did you find it?”

She jumped. “Find what?”

“A pen?” He looked at her questioningly.

“Ummm…” She looked around frantically and found a Papermate along the top of the desk frame. She picked it up and slid the drawer closed with her hip as she turned to face him. “Yep, got it.”

She couldn’t focus on the game after that, or the two others that followed it. Reid preened that his precious port was safe for another occasion and she made all of the right grumbling noises to cover the avalanche of questions that seeing the certificate had unleashed. It suddenly felt like she’d never get past Vegas, no matter what she tried, and when he walked her to the door at the end of the evening and his hands lingered against her back as he hugged her goodbye, she realized that the problem was always going to be with her.


	13. Chapter 13

It was the beginning of a fine day off. She eased into a seat on her balcony and reveled in the sun beating down on her bare calves as she stretched out. With a huge mug of coffee in one hand, last week’s Sunday New York Times crossword in the other, and no better place to be, she sighed contentedly. She didn’t care if it seemed dull - she’d been looking forward to it throughout their last case: a little alone time, quality caffeine, and then she’d call up Reid and get him to help her with the crossword clues that she couldn’t get… He always did the puzzles the day they were printed, and in pen. It was unnerving. But he seemed to find it amusing when she tried, and _one day_ she was going to surprise him and finish one on her own.

Her cell rang and she sighed once for the disturbance, and then again when she saw the name of the caller.

“Morgan, it’s too early to try to cajole me into some ridiculous outdoor activity on my day off. It’s only ten o’clock and I haven’t even finished my first coffee yet.”

Besides which she wasn’t up for his company today. She was secretly hoping that her S.O.S. crossword call to Reid would lead to one of their typical ‘nerd adventures’ together. Maybe a trip to the Air and Space Museum or an epic book hunt or another attempt to teach her chess… that was always good for a laugh…

“Emily, Reid’s in a hostage situation.”

She stood too quickly and spilled her mug across the newspaper puzzle, ruining it. “What?!?”

“I’m light on details. Apparently, he went to his bank this morning and sixty seconds later some idiot walked in to hold the place up. The guy shot a guard - it’s turning into a clusterfuck. And you know Reid… he’s trying to fix it.”

“He’s trying to be a goddamned hero,” she growled as she ran back into her condo to find clothes, her weapon, and something to prevent her from being paralyzed by fear.

“You got it. Hotch wants us all in even though DCPD hasn’t requested our assistance yet. Garcia’s sending through the address-”

“I know where he banks,” she interrupted. “I’ll be onsite in fifteen.”

She hung up on Morgan and a minute later Garcia flashed her the address and what few details the Bureau had on the event. Prentiss ignored it as she fought to get into some clothes and get out of her apartment. It was all taking too long. He was across town trying to save someone who might not be worth saving, and she was bumbling around, hopelessly behind him. She should be there - _now_ \- with him. That was her job, wasn’t it? 

_Don’t do anything stupid until I get there, Reid. Just wait for me, dammit…_

She grabbed her keys, badge, and gun before she slammed the door behind her exactly two minutes after she received Morgan’s call, her whole being beating out Reid’s name. 

~~~~

Crosstown traffic was murder and by the time she’d made her way through it, she was ready to commit murder herself, indiscriminately. She saw Hotch as she pulled up just outside of the police perimeter and he strode towards her even before she killed the engine.

“It’s over. He’s not here,” Hotch said without preamble. “They took them both to G.W.U.”

“Is he okay?” Her breath abandoned her as she said it.

“That’s unclear - this situation is a mess. The DCPD didn’t use a negotiator, and then there was some issue with how they took the suspect into custody…” Hotch’s look turned ferocious. Someone was going to lose their job over this. “I have to stay and deal with this. I need you to take point at the hospital, Prentiss. Give me an update on Reid as soon as possible.”

Hotch’s whole bearing was tense, as if he’d snap at any moment and go on a violent spree himself. She’d rarely seen that on him, and it usually was a result of too little information and too much speculation. Hotch hated being out of control almost as much as she did. She decided that the team was all on the same page with regards to their fear and anger at the situation, so she swallowed it down and tried not to add to it.

“I’m on it.” She started the car again.

“I’ll send Morgan after you when he arrives.” Hotch backed away from the car. “Get into as many faces as you have to at the hospital. I don’t care if you have to break into a surgery - you have my permission to be an asshole. No one keeps us from our people.”

She nodded once and threw the car hard into reverse as she exited to the nearest side street with too much speed. She couldn’t agree more.

~~~

The emergency room at G.W.U. was barely controlled chaos when she arrived, and yet the intake staff seemed annoyingly inured to it. Perhaps it was always like this for them. She flashed her badge and threw her bitchiness around liberally until she got someone pissed off enough to give her answers.

“The guy brought in from the bank robbery?” The overworked nurse squinted at her computer and then her expression changed horribly. “Oh. He didn’t make it, Agent. I can get someone to give you his personal effects though. I assume that you’ll need them for your investigation?”

She leaned heavily against the admitting desk and just stared at the nurse, mouth open, fighting hard to find her next breath. 

“He didn’t make it? You’re sure?”

_Reid…_

“Are you okay, Agent Prentiss?” The nurse seemed taken aback by her reaction, which only pissed Prentiss off more. 

_No, I’m not fucking okay! You just told me my best friend is dead… more than a best friend… I don’t know what to do now. I always know what I should do in a crisis… but, Reid. Oh god, not like this…_

Another person in scrubs took note of the conversation and leaned in. “You’re FBI? You’re looking for your guy, right?”

Prentiss nodded in a daze. Scrubs leaned in to look at the nurse’s screen and then shook his head.

“She doesn’t mean the robber,” Scrubs said to the nurse, and then turned back to Prentiss with a look of apology. “Your agent is fine. He’s getting stitched up. I’ll take you to him, c’mon.”

“What?” she murmured but followed Scrubs anyway.

“Sorry. It gets crazy in here. Things get messed up, ya know? It didn’t seem right that the Feds would be upset over a dead bank robber though… she shoulda realized that you were asking about your colleague. Tunnel vision, I guess.”

“I guess,” Prentiss growled thinking that there was no good excuse for telling anybody that someone was dead unless you were sure about it.

Scrubs pointed to a curtained area at the end of the hall. It was like a dozen others that held people getting casts and having their heart rates monitored and even one guy who was puking his guts out.

“He’s there. They should be done with him now.”

Prentiss rushed forward and pulled the curtain back with her heartbeat pounding against her temples. Perhaps she didn’t really believe what Scrubs told her and that Reid wouldn’t be there either. But he was there, standing next to the examination bed in torn clothes and with a huge bandage covering the side of his throat. His look of shock lingered for an instant before melting into a sigh of relief that made his whole body sag.

“Hey,” he waved, one side of his mouth lifting a little.

“Really? ‘Hey’… that’s what you’ve got for me?”

She felt as if the surface of her was crackling all over with useless energy. Her body didn’t know what to do with the adrenaline and the sudden onslaught of dread that had crashed into her simultaneously. It was now mixing in her chest like something explosive and she had no clue where to aim it. She wanted to kill the guy who’d started all of this, but he was already dead, and then she thought she’d settle for killing the clueless intake nurse instead. Or maybe even pummeling Reid a little because, you know, he’d made a mess of her and he didn’t even appreciate that.

“They told me you were dead at the intake desk,” she muttered as she moved towards him trying to stifle the urge to pull him in for a hug.

“Oh.” His exhaustion cleared for an instant as he looked at her worriedly. “I’m sorry…”

She laughed but it wasn’t really funny. “Why are you apologizing? That’s just ridiculous.”

“That must have been horrible… I wouldn’t have handled that well… you know, if our positions had been reversed. That’s why I’m sorry, I guess.”

She smiled at him - she couldn’t help it. It was comforting to think that he finally got that they’d both had really shitty mornings. But she was still bubbling over with confusing signals: she wanted to hit him, to rail at him for the unnecessary danger he’d invited in, and she also wanted to wrap him up so that the next threat would have to get through layers of her before it did any damage. She wanted to be closer to him than his next breath, and she wanted him to understand that it wasn’t optional for either of them. Instead she focused on his bandage and stepped closer to him. She felt him go still and watch her.

“What happened?” She nodded at his neck.

“He wanted to negotiate with the cops and needed a shield. He had a shotgun and a hunting knife. It’s easier to control a hostage with a knife.”

Her hand rose unconsciously towards his neck but caught her quickly and stilled it.

“It happened when the cops tried to take him - it was an accident. He didn’t mean to-”

“Spence, he had a knife to your throat,” she bit out. “Stop making excuses for him.”

He held her hand in silence until she met his gaze. It was focused in his need to reassure her.

“I know what you’re feeling, but I promise you that I’m fine.”

Did he know? Did he understand the scope of confusion and grief that had nearly reduced her to a useless human being that day? She wondered if he did, and she wondered what she should do about it because it didn’t feel appropriate at all. It scared her to death.

“Are you really fine?” she croaked. “Don’t lie to make me feel better.”

When she dragged herself away from the mesmerism of his neck wound, she realized he had the beginnings of a wicked bruise along his jaw. His shirtsleeve was pulled back where he still gripped her hand and she saw more bruising there as well. He’d been beaten, bound, cut… She should’ve been with him. She should’ve saved him. It was unacceptable that he’d risked his life alone… she needed him. Why didn’t he see that she needed him? She shuddered before she could cover it up.

“I wouldn’t lie to you about that.” He squeezed her hand. She soaked up the warmth of his connection - undeniably real and present - and then lowered her hand as they separated. He was okay. They were okay. It was time to pull herself together.

“Besides,” he added with a smirk. “I don’t have the balls to face your wrath if you ever discovered my mendacity.” 

And in the space of one sentence, they were back on the familiar ground of their smartass friendship. She breathed out and let the sigh carry some of the things that she couldn’t articulate with it. It felt strangely disappointing.

“You are so right about that.” She took another step back and tried to make her tone lighthearted, but it felt forced and he noticed. “Are they done with you? Can we get out of here?”

“I think so. I’d really like to.”

“Okay. Let’s do that.”

She began walking and he fell into step beside her. She realized that she’d become used to his presence there, his partnership - that it eased her to feel him next to her. In the instant it took her brain to understand what her body was telling it, she promised not to take him for granted anymore. She didn’t ever want to feel the way she had at that intake desk again.

“Hey,” he bumped her shoulder lightly with his. “Everything all right now? You still look like you might kill someone.”

“Stop worrying.” She made her forced nonchalance more convincing and threw him a wink for good measure. “If I do, you’re safe. You’ve already died once today - that’s more than enough.”

~~~~

“I promise you that I’m fine.”

Her hands hovered over him but she couldn’t seem to make them land anywhere. She was desperate to know, not just to hear him say the words. Her gaze sharpened to the bruise on his face, the way the dark smudges beneath his eyes seemed deeper, his dress shirt torn at the neck… She was breathing too fast, there was heat behind her eyes that was going to lead to tears soon enough, and she could feel her pulse going wild in her.

_But he’s fine. He’s just fine…_

It didn’t matter - she couldn’t control her reaction and she couldn’t hide it away from him unless she turned around and walked away without another word. She wouldn’t do that to him.

“Please,” her voice broke. “I need to know that… you’re whole.”

The impulse barely made sense to her; she didn’t know if he understood. Then he took a half step forward until his chest brushed her useless hands.

“Okay,” he whispered.

Her eyes flashed to his and his gaze was calm, open… _do what you have to do._ Relief crashed over her and she nearly collapsed under the weight of it. Her fingers skimmed the outline of his shoulders and then traced down until they settled along the flat planes of his stomach. Even through his shirt, she felt his muscles twitch. His breathing changed - he probably hadn’t anticipated this at all, but he held still anyway. She was watching her hands, trying to keep the tide of feeling at bay, to find a way of pressing all of this expanding terror back into the tiny box that she’d allocated to it.

“This is silly…” She wasn’t sure if she was saying it for his benefit or not. “This - it just came over me hard suddenly. You’re _right here_ … you’re okay…”

Her hands left the warm circles she had pressed into his abdomen and flicked to his wrists at his sides. Her hands gripped them gently, and then she lifted one so that his sleeve pulled back and revealed the new bruise forming around the joint. A wet, angry sound erupted from her before she could clamp her mouth shut and he tried to pull his hand away.

“No!” It was quiet, but insistent, so he stopped struggling. She rubbed her thumb across the bruise and then seemed to snap out of it when he expressed his discomfort. “Sorry.”

Suddenly, alongside the fear were the memories of him as he exited the shower that morning in Vegas. The wicked, mouth-shaped bruises, his bloodied back - he’d willingly withstood worse than what was presented to her now, and she had done it to him. Her face got hot as the thought settled over her, and then she felt the shame of it and the anger of _not knowing_. Reid was deceptive: he appeared fragile, but he’d withstood a lot in the time she’d known him both physically and psychologically. He didn’t deserve to be constantly underestimated by everyone around him, and as his friend, she should’ve been the first to assert his resiliency. But this wasn’t really about Reid, it was about her, how she felt something missing in her and that her fruitless searching for answers inexorably led back to him.

She lowered his wrist and let her hands skim up his arms and along his shoulders. He winced as her fingers skipped over his collarbone. She hesitated and then gently pulled the torn shirt away to reveal the taped bandage over his neck. He strained a little even though it pained him, to show her as much as he could. She outlined the edge of the bandage, feather-light, and felt her breath leave her as if it would never come back. Just an inch higher, a little deeper and he wouldn’t be standing there submitting to her scrutiny. She couldn’t stand thinking it, but even as she tried to banish it from her mind, it flared up blood-bright and knife-sharp, wedging it’s way into anything that might dare to distract her from it. 

Before she could stop herself, she leaned in and brushed her lips across his throat just above the dressing. Her eyes closed and she lost herself in the horrifying smell of antiseptic and chalky medical tape mixed with the subtler tang of his blood underneath. He stiffened at the motion but it only registered distantly with her; she had to pull that horror inside her, to assimilate it into her knowledge that he had survived. Her lips closed on his throat as her hands crawled up to his face gently holding him in place. She pushed her face into his neck, trying to banish the idea of his mortality with the warmth of his skin, his pulse thrumming against her cheek.

“Emily…”

Then her lips were on his, eyes squeezed tight to keep her tears to herself as she ate his soft gasps. 

_This is not okay… how can I explain this away?_

She pulled back, blinking fiercely and blushing at her own thoughtlessness, and she watched as his look of surprise burned away into longing before her. She’d never seen that look, she thought, but the sudden warm churn of her gut told her that she was mistaken. And she lost her breath for the second time.

 

She woke hard, instantaneously alert and aware of how she’d been ripped from one reality to another. She was breathing like she was running and when she turned her head against the pillow it felt wet. She sat up and scrubbed the tears from her face; she was shaking and restless and wrung out as if she’d been on a knife’s edge for hours. 

“What the hell is wrong with me?”

She walked to the bathroom and splashed her face, drinking a glass of water to anchor her in the present. She didn’t turn on the lights because she didn’t want to see if she looked as desperate as she felt. Her whole body tingled with nervous energy - the instinct to run, to flee, to do anything other than stand there and _feel_. She went to her balcony, sliding the glass open to take in gulps of the dark, wet D.C. air. 

“This has got to stop.”

She tried not to think about how warm Reid’s neck had felt under her lips.


	14. Chapter 14

“You figure it out yet?” Prentiss held a cup of coffee in each hand as she walked into the conference room that the San Jose Police Department had given over to their use. It was past midnight but they’d been up for thirty hours so the only acceptable thing they could bring one another was caffeine.

“No.” Reid pouted and threw one of the dry erasers at the white board before burying his face in his hands. Prentiss tried to suppress a hysterical laugh as she witnessed his minor tantrum. “I’ve tried eleven distinct models… no pattern has emerged.”

“Maybe there isn’t one.” She sat beside him at the table and nudged a mug in his direction.

“There’s always a pattern,” he glared.

“There’s always a pattern after the fact,” she corrected. “Maybe we just don’t have enough yet.”

“That’s not comforting. I can’t just sit around doing nothing. I’ve gotta find something to jumpstart us in a direction… there’s gotta be _something_ I’m not seeing…”

He ran his hands roughly through his hair and frowned as he swiveled away from the board. His brow knit as he focused on his shoes mumbling facts to himself and she suddenly wanted his attention; she wanted to pull him from the maps and the numbers and to soothe away the lines around his mouth and eyes with her fingers. She wanted him to really see her for a moment and to witness that change come over him, knowing that it was because of her. An overwhelming urge to touch him rose up in her from out of nowhere. Without questioning the impulse, she reached out and gently drew the hair out of his face and tucked it behind one ear, bringing his face up to meet hers in the process. His eyes widened as she received the look she was hoping for - she had his attention.

“It’s not all on you, Reid. We’re all in this, and sometimes there’s nothing we can do but wait.”

“Yeah, I’m not fond of that strategy…”

She laughed and it produced a smile on him that looked equal parts surprised and delighted. “I’m with you on that one, but… maybe you oughta see this as a chance to rest, recharge a little. You look beat…”

Her fingers slid from his chin up to his cheek skimming the dark shadows beneath his eyes. His smile faded a little as she did it but he held still.

“I’m not sure I could relax long enough to sleep.”

“I think you can do anything you set that big ol’ brain of yours to. Give it a try anyway… for me?”

She smiled and cupped the side of his face. He stared for a moment and then sighed, closing his eyes and leaning against her hand for an instant before answering. “Okay, but I think you’ll find the results disappointing.”

“Never,” she murmured, and then realized she’d been touching his face for almost half a minute. She pulled her hand away and decided that maybe she was a little punchy from sleep deprivation as well.

“You’d better take the temptation with you if you’re leaving.”

Her throat tightened as he said it and she felt her pulse flutter. Then she saw one side of his mouth lift in a smirk as he pushed the mug of coffee back towards her on the table. She shook off the moment with a huff.

“Oh, right… can’t leave you two alone in a room together without a chaperone, can I?”

“Nope.” He rose and walked over to an uncomfortable-looking sofa in the corner of the room and collapsed on it. “We’re far too familiar with one another to be trusted.”

She collected the coffee and watched him drape an arm over his face as he lay back. She was impressed that he’d taken her suggestion to heart.

“Wake me in an hour? Or whenever we get something new?” he mumbled.

“Sure.” She watched him a moment longer and then left the conference room. She ran into J.J. standing just beyond the door and held out Reid’s mug to her. “Want this?”

“You got him to take a break?”

“Uh-huh. Miraculous, I know.”

J.J. accepted the mug and held it to her lips as she watched Prentiss drink hers. They turned together and wandered aimlessly through the half-deserted squad room with no destination in mind. “Can I ask you something that is absolutely none of my business, Emily?”

“I’m sensing I’ll regret this but, sure. Shoot.”

“Is there something going on with you and Reid?”

Prentiss stopped and gave her friend a hard look.

“It’s just… the way you are with him sometimes,” J.J. spoke quickly but kept her voice low. “The way you speak to each other… even right now in the conference room, well, it was kinda… intimate.”

“J.J.!”

“Don’t give me that prudish look… you know I think Spence is amazing. If you two were-”

“Jennifer, Reid and I are friends. Period.”

“All I’m saying is that, it might be from outta left field, but it’d probably be great. He’s kind and loyal and really dedicated…”

“You realize that you’re describing a golden retriever, right?” Prentiss felt weirdly offended by this conversation. “He’s a guy, not a pet.”

“Okay, I’m saying this badly,” J.J. laughed, not at all put off by Prentiss’s glare. “My point is, if it _did_ happen, it would be unexpected but awesome. You could do far worse.”

“Why do people always say ‘you could do worse’ like it’s a good thing?”

“Emily, it’s just that you guys have this… connection that sorta transcends your quirks and it seems to have gotten stronger with time. That’s not such a common thing and maybe you shouldn’t dismiss it.”

“I appreciate the sentiment, J.J., but could we stop talking about this before my head explodes? There is nothing going on there - I give you my word. We’re buddies, nothing more.”

“Oh,” J.J.’s smile faded. “Well, in that case, do you think Reid knows that?”

“What do you mean?”

“The intimacy I’ve been seeing? You’ve both been doing it.”

The flutter returned to her chest as she thought about that. She remembered the way Reid looked at her as she touched him, the way he shook months before when she’d been shot. And then there was that wedding certificate. They never talked about these things just as they never discussed Vegas, and somehow it felt as though their silence on these incidents painted them all with the same brush. But they weren’t the same. Vegas had been an aberrant manipulation; the others were signifiers of friendship, right? The fluttering feeling got more pointed and she wasn’t so far in denial as to misunderstand what she was trying to tell herself. She hadn’t been on a date in ages, and she couldn’t remember the last time Reid even mentioned a woman outside the scope of a case. And there were the persistently erotic dreams that never seemed to either satisfy or elucidate… Yeah, she was picking up all of the cards that her subconscious was putting down, and so were her observant co-workers, apparently. 

“Reid knows the boundaries of our friendship as well, J.J.” she coughed so that it wouldn’t seem like a hedged statement. “I’ve never considered our behavior to be out of the ordinary. But I suppose you could read it that way… because we’re both single and straight. There are expectations associated with that.”

J.J. held her mug in front of her lips and looked suitably chastened. Prentiss suddenly felt like a heel by forcing an accusatory tone into the conversation. She just wanted J.J. to stop looking at _whatever_ she and Reid had. It felt like something she wasn’t prepared to handle, a secret that she didn’t want to share. She heard Reid’s voice in her head: _We’re far too familiar with one another to be trusted…_

“Do _you_ think I’m being inappropriate with Reid, J.J.?” It was a genuine question, despite her desire to get off the subject.

“If you say you’re just friends, and that’s all you really feel coming from him as well, then I believe you, Emily.” J.J. raised her hands a little. “Screw what anyone else thinks.”

“Sure, okay.” Prentiss forced herself to laugh because J.J. was expecting her to, but right then and there she decided that things between her and Reid would have to change. She slurped her coffee but it suddenly soured in her mouth. 

~~~~

He lay on the couch and tried to rest but all he could think about was how she’d touched him. He was exhausted and when she’d held his face in her hand, he’d let his mask slip a little too much - he could think of nothing better than falling asleep right there, with her. He should have been stronger, but as he lay there and replayed it in his mind, he thought maybe she was trying to tell him something. Their friendship was different now - they both knew it. They were years away from _that night_ but the change between them had evolved; it had it’s own history now. It was no longer about the embarrassment of one mistake. He’d wanted to reach out and hold her face as she held his and say _“don’t do this in the name of friendship”_.

Maybe it was time for the denial to end. Maybe he had to try being the man he was in Vegas, the man that had promised her that he’d be whatever she wanted years ago in her mother’s ballroom. He didn’t know if it was right, but it was time to try something.

So, he lay there and imagined the warmth of her palm against his cheek, but it did little to help him rest.


	15. Chapter 15

Prentiss came back from her meeting with the D.C. District Attorney to find Reid on a call. As she got closer, sipping her coffee, she realized there was something odd about it. His body was curled into the receiver as if he were trying to wall off the caller from the rest of the office. His face was cast down, avoiding eye contact, and he wasn’t taking any notes. She picked up her pace a little, suddenly worried that something had happened to his mother… if it had, she hoped that he’d let her help him with it. As she drew near, she picked up his voice.

“…I know. I feel that way also.”

She sat at her desk and he looked up at her quickly before turning away into the phone. She put down her mug and just stared; it was if he’d wordlessly told her that it was none of her business.

“It’s okay, I understand,” he continued softly. “You know I want you to be happy, I always have…”

She suddenly felt cold all over. He wasn’t speaking to his mom - the tone was all wrong. And his voice… it was gentle… close.

“You know I will… I love you too…”

Prentiss nearly spilled her coffee all over her desk.

Reid said goodbye and hung up before turning back to face his computer. He wasn’t looking at her but she had a feeling that he was somehow watching her nonetheless. She couldn’t stop staring, and then decided that she had no right to be shocked or to demand anything of him in that moment. She coughed and forced herself to look at her paperwork even though it no longer appeared to be written in English.

“That was Austin,” he offered quietly.

 _Austin? Who the hell was Austin?_ Then she remembered a bartender from a case they’d worked a few years ago. She’d been impressed by Reid’s sleight of hand.

“It’s none of my business-”

“She called to say that she’s getting married,” he continued. “Some orthodontist from Omaha, apparently.”

Prentiss was ashamed at how good that statement made her feel all of sudden. “Wow. That’s…”

“The dullest thing I’ve ever heard, yes. But, she always struck me as a woman who craved stability, despite her adventurous bravado.” He sighed. “It’s probably exactly what she wants.”

In that moment the friend in her took over as she felt a wave of sorrow for him, and gently told him so. She wondered if this was what a heartbroken Spencer Reid looked like. He waved off her apology with a half smile.

“It’s fine. I have a feeling that I’m just one of many phone calls she is going to make this afternoon.”

“What’s the point in that? To make you jealous?”

He looked at her strangely. “Of course not. She just wanted to say goodbye. She’s closing out one section of her life before she starts a new one, that’s all. I’m not jealous.”

“But,” Prentiss felt her face heat as she hesitated. Wasn’t this the sort of personal stuff they were supposed to avoid? Hadn’t she decided to back away from this kind of intimacy with him? “You said you loved her…”

“I do love her.” He still seemed puzzled that she didn’t understand. “There are many kinds of love, Prentiss.”

She shook her head, tried to argue, and then went back to her paperwork instead. _None of my business,_ she told herself emphatically. There was almost a minute of silence between them before he spoke again.

“We spent some time together and we both enjoyed ourselves.”

Prentiss looked up.

“She showed me things about myself, and I love her for that. It ended some time ago mostly because, aside from sex, we didn’t have much in common.”

She hadn’t expected him to be this frank with her. Ever. She was simultaneously blown away by the trust he was showing her as well as his apparent lack of shame in revealing his secrets. He wasn’t even blushing. It felt like an echo of the Reid she only knew in her dreams. 

“I’m happy that she’s found what she’s been searching for, but… I’ll miss her. There won’t be space in her new life for ex-lovers, so… this feels a little like grief. Even though we haven’t spoken in a long time, _this call_ was the last one, so I had to tell her that she meant something to me… that she always will mean something. But that doesn’t imply I’ll spend the rest of my life pining for her - it wasn’t that kind of attachment.”

He leaned on his elbow, closer to the partition that separated their desks. “Do you see now?”

She heard J.J.’s voice in her head and saw what her friend had seen: he wasn’t afraid to open himself to her. Their closeness was definitely a two-way street and she suddenly felt very conflicted about enjoying it so much while struggling to keep it at bay. She wondered if he even noticed that, if he understood how difficult it was to control.

“You know,” Prentiss took a breath and allowed herself to gather up exactly what she wanted to say in that moment. “You’re a surprising guy most of the time. But sometimes… sometimes you’re _impressively_ surprising.”

He went a little blank for an instant and then offered her a sheepish smile. “Umm, that’s good, right?”

“Yeah, it’s good.” She chuckled and then reached out to touch his arm on impulse. As her fingers landed on his sleeve, she felt herself giving into her conflict, choosing enjoyment over propriety once again. “I think this calls for a drink after work. We can toast Austin, and her dentist, and the guy that she let get away.”

She was surprised he blushed at that considering everything he’d just said, but he nodded his agreement. She felt guilty, and also so much better than she should that she was going to take her friend out for a consolation drink and have him to herself for a little bit longer.


	16. Chapter 16

Prentiss wished that J.J. were keeping her cool a little bit better. If she got any more bouncy, she’d give the whole thing away to the office. Not that Prentiss had to hide this… not any more than anyone who sought to keep their personal life out of the workplace did. Well, that’s what she kept telling herself at least. Honestly, J.J. understood the value of a good poker face - why couldn’t she put one on now?

“So,” J.J. whispered as she rooted through the staff fridge for something with chocolate in it. “Are you nervous?”

“J.J., it’s a date. I’m not sitting the LSATs or something.”

“Emily, it’s been a while. Longer than ‘a while’ actually… whatever term comes after ‘a while’, I guess. It’s fine to be nervous.”

“Who’s nervous?” Garcia suddenly appeared in the kitchen like a purple, glittery ninja.

“Emily is.”

“I’m not.”

“She’s finally going on a date with Grant.” J.J. was still half embedded in the fridge.

“Yeeeessss!” Garcia fistpumped. “Oh, good job, honey! He’s so hot that volcanic lava has performance anxiety in his presence.”

Okay, so they weren’t wrong about that. Grant was almost supernaturally good looking; it had been the reason why she’d originally turned him down after they met at one of J.J. and Will’s get-togethers. No one that attractive and capable and charming should still be single in his forties. There had to be something wrong with him. But J.J. had worked on her, and later Will had, explaining that he’d known Grant since they were teens in New Orleans and that he was just as upstanding and honorable as he appeared. And, Will added, he kept asking about her.

“You know those military types,” Will had smirked. “They like themselves a challenge.”

So, she’d relented and told Will to give Grant her number. And Grant had called, and she’d told him ‘yes’ because it couldn’t possibly hurt to go on one date. If it went pear-shaped, she was armed, she told herself. Besides, she hadn’t been on a date in… well, _longer_ than J.J. suggested, and she hadn’t had sex since—

She forced herself to forget about the end of that statement.

“Who’s hotter than volcanic lava?”

She looked around and saw Reid in the doorway to the kitchen, probably arming himself with a ton of facts about volcanoes while he stood there looking befuddled. _Shit._

“You are, sweety.” Garcia grinned and swept him up into a crushing hug that ended with a loud kiss on his cheek. He blushed and tried to wipe away her lipstick. “But we’re also talking about Prentiss’s date, the 6’5” Navy SEAL commander. You both give magma a run for its money.”

“You’re… dating a Navy SEAL?”

His blush got deeper and his eyes kept flicking from her, to his coffee mug, and back to her again, as if he didn’t know where to look. She felt a tremendous wave of… something ripple out of her towards him. It felt as though she’d purposefully hurt him and she wanted to stop that immediately, but that was a crazy impulse. All she’d done was reveal something that she wanted to bring up with him in her own time, that’s all.

“It’s not ‘dating’… it’s a first date. On Friday,” she clarified.

“He’s a childhood friend of Will’s,” J.J. spoke up, having given up on her hunt for chocolate. “Really nice guy. Just been too busy with his career to find the right woman. I told Will ‘that sounds like someone we know’ and it just all came together.”

Prentiss rolled her eyes. “For the last time: it’s just a date. Quit making it into something epic.”

“You act like you’ve never seen him, Emily. That man _is_ epic.” Garcia fanned herself.

“You’ve met him too?” Reid asked.

“We all did,” Garcia chirped. “He came to J.J. and Will’s for dinner a few months back… that one you missed…”

“You were at the Particle Physics forum in Pasadena that weekend,” Prentiss said without thinking about it. She didn’t think it was even slightly weird that she knew his schedule almost as well as he did.

“Oh.” He nodded and rocked on his feet without looking up. 

Her conflict pierced the center of her chest as it always did. But they had to move forward, didn’t they? She couldn’t keep thrashing around in her self-imposed quagmire of inappropriate friendship. She was going on a date and it was going to be healthy for both of them - she should have done it ages ago. Reid would get it in time. And they’d always have work to keep them connected. She watched as he moved past them placing his mug in the kitchen sink before turning to leave. 

“Well, good luck… umm, have a nice time.”

He walked away, shoulders curled, hands shoved in his pockets, and she thought he looked exactly like the Spencer Reid she’d met her first day on the job. He looked like the guy she’d dismissed as a kid, before she knew him. It seemed as though his simple act of leaving was a permanent _end_ of something, and she fought to breathe as her chest squeezed uncomfortably.

Garcia began to pepper her with questions about what she was going to wear and if she knew where they were going. She let her gaze linger on the spot where Reid had been, and then turned her attention back to her friends. J.J. gave her a strange look; her excitement had been replaced by something more critical. Prentiss forced an air of sarcasm and long-suffering annoyance at them both until J.J.’s look passed and Garcia’s curiosity was sated. There was nothing to see here - at least nothing that anyone had a right to other than her.

As they left the kitchen to return to their various desks, J.J. nudged her shoulder lightly.

“I know you said that you and Reid were just friends. But do you think his reaction about Grant was ‘friendly’, Em? He seemed… upset.”

“J.J. …” she sighed, though the ripple of guilt pinged through her again.

“Listen, I believe that you see him as a friend, I really do. But I think Spence sees you as more than that. I think you need to talk to him - you know, straighten this out before it ruins your friendship.” J.J. pressed her lips together and thought for a moment. “We had a talk like that once - he and I - and I’m glad. I can’t imagine my life without him in it, but I was never going to love him. Not _that way_ , anyway.”

Prentiss felt rooted to the spot. The advice was valuable but she and Reid had already gone from friendship to something somewhere smack in the middle of ‘complicated’. A simple, friendly talk wasn’t going to cut it. And they never talked about Vegas. Not ever. They’d been _married_ , for chrissakes… it wasn’t a case of quashing an innocent crush.

“Okay, maybe you’re right. I’ll talk to him, Jen.” It felt like a reasonable thing to say even though she had absolutely no intention of doing it.

J.J.’s expression softened as she squeezed Prentiss’s arm. “It’ll be fine once you get it out there. He’s a gentleman and he understands the value of what you two have. He won’t risk that for something that’s never gonna happen. You’ll see.”

He was a gentleman and Prentiss thought that he did value the quality of what they had. But the idea that he wouldn’t risk that in order to get something more - that he _hadn’t_ risked it in nearly four years - made her feel the opposite of what J.J. was suggesting. It made her feel that, in Reid’s eyes, she wasn’t worth the effort.


	17. Chapter 17

It had been a miserable day in a miserable week amongst a miserable month and Reid couldn’t wait for it to end. He couldn’t imagine it being any worse unless he’d been shot or his place burned down or he’d become the host for an evil, alien parasite. Normally, he’d find an excuse to call Prentiss over, or to drag her to the movies or a museum, but that wasn’t an option now that she was… well, it just wasn’t an option.

He hadn’t seen her all day and assumed that her testimony had gone longer than she expected. It meant that he got more work done because he wasn’t looking up every few minutes hoping to catch a forgotten, casual expression that might give him some insight into the new parameters of her personal life. He just wanted a scrap, a crumb, _anything_ that might tell him definitively which choice he should make. He just wanted to stop wondering all the damned time. He thought she understood… that day after Austin called… he thought they’d had some sort of meeting of the minds. But maybe he’d come off as inscrutable as ever. Maybe she didn’t really know him - or care to know him - at all.

He was building up to a tremendous sulk as he wandered through the bullpen well after most had left for the weekend. Perhaps now was the time to take Morgan up on his standing offer to be his ‘Saturday night wingman’. The whole idea sort of repelled him, but it would probably be distracting, and with Morgan around, he’d most likely stay out of trouble. Besides, he wasn’t going to meet new people by lurking the sixth floor of the Behavioral Analysis building or being cooped up in his apartment. Prentiss had moved on, so should he. It wasn’t right to keep indulging in hope - not now, so many years after _that night_ , and with her involved in what appeared to be a very satisfying relationship with someone else. Initially, he’d consoled himself with the idea that one date was meaningless. But one date had turned to two, and then four, and then there appeared to be a ‘Grant update’ held every Monday morning in the staff kitchen for J.J. and Garcia’s benefit, and well… it was time to recognize that Grant was a part of Prentiss’s life now. And Reid’s role had subsequently diminished. It was bound to happen eventually. He needed to let her go, for real this time.

He turned the corner towards the staff locker rooms, weighed down by a variety of unwelcome options, when he ran directly into Prentiss as she exited from the women’s side. She jumped and then laughed when she recognized him, reaching out to grab his arm and squeeze it.

“You scared the crap out of me,” she breezed.

 _Oh, man._ He stood back and stared at her wordlessly. She was dressed in something stunning: midnight blue, floor length, clinging to her shape just so and giving her an amazing silhouette. It looked soft, like velvet, and he wanted to touch it, but he wanted to touch her skin more as it glowed and contrasted against the dark fabric.

“You l-look…” he stammered. “Well, the twenty-seven descriptors that immediately come to mind fail to do you justice in that dress.”

She blushed and bent her head so that her hair almost hid it from view, and wasn’t _that_ just a kick to the gut. “Flatterer.”

“Flattery suggests an ulterior motive or an attempt at manipulation. I’m just simply stating the facts in front of me.”

He looked up to her face and that was almost worse than looking at the dress because her eyes were glittering with mischief and she was smiling at him in that way that made him want to do whatever she suggested. 

“W-where are you going looking like that?” he swallowed, already guessing at the answer. “Don’t tell me there’s a new uniform protocol for stakeouts or something…”

She laughed gently and stepped in a little closer. “You’d better start practicing walking in heels, Doctor.”

“It’s gonna mess up the cuffs on _all_ of my trousers.” He rolled his eyes for her amusement.

“I’m going to the opera. With Grant.” She rushed through the last part and tried to cover it with a grin. “I was in court all day and figured that I might not make it home to change. It’s not like I make a habit of stowing formal wear in my work locker. I just keep my cape and tights in there.”

“Yes, I understand that spandex is still frowned upon in opera circles.” He held a straight face as he said it but she squeezed his arm as she laughed again. “Things must be going well… with Grant if you’re subjecting him to the opera already.”

“But it’s Puccini!” she mock-gasped, and then shrugged when she saw that he expected a serious answer. “Yeah, I guess. He’s persistent. He just keeps showing up, ya know?”

He took a tiny step back at that. Just enough to break her hold on his arm. He felt like yelling that he’d shown up every day for years - he even liked Puccini - and she knew that about him. Once upon a time, she’d asked him to be her shield…

“Well, maybe he just recognizes his own good fortune,” he choked out instead. 

“Reid, we’ve never really talked about… this thing with Grant…”

“What’s to talk about?” He forced himself to look up and affect an air of innocence. He didn’t want her pity. “The only thing that concerns me is whether or not you’re happy. Are you happy, Emily?”

_Just look at me and tell me ‘no’. That’s all I’d need… I’d sweep you up in that amazing dress and beg you to let me make you happy._

She stared at him for a long time. “Yes.”

He locked his knees and locked his innocent expression to his face. He’d just have to hold it together for another hour until he could get home and let it all out: toxins and bile and sorrow and regret… everything… all of it.

“Then I’m pleased for you,” he smiled just as hers seemed to dim.

“Are you?” she whispered.

“Of course.”

“You know… you know that your opinion means a lot to me, right?”

His chest felt like it was collapsing in on itself. _Just my opinion, not me._

“Yes, I do, and I’m sorry if I haven’t seemed supportive of this.”

“That’s not what I meant at all,” she said sharply and it made him look at her trying to figure out what she _did_ mean. “You don’t have to agree with me. Especially about this…”

_Especially about this? What did THAT mean?_

“I just… I,” she stumbled and went silent for an instant before she straightened her shoulders and continued. “I want you to be happy too, Spencer. I hope that… if there were something I could do to make that happen for you, you’d say so. You would, wouldn’t you?”

_Hello, Window of Opportunity. Just tell her. Tell her you’re jealous as hell, and crazy for her, and that the only damned thing that comes to mind when you think about being ‘happy’ is her…_

He looked at her with her earnest expression and her fantastic dress, and thought about every great moment they’d had together over the years. If she’d wanted him, she’d have done something about it - all that would come of being honest now was breaking apart the friendship that had been so necessary to both of them. He couldn’t handle losing that even if it meant that he’d never get a chance to have what he really wanted. She was more than that to him - he wasn’t going to let his inability to kiss her or to hold her ruin everything.

“I’d let you know if there was something you could help with, Emily,” he said gently. “But for the time being, your happiness will have to be enough for both of us.”

He smiled and after a brief hesitation, she returned it but he noticed that it didn’t reach her eyes. Maybe she didn’t believe him.

“You oughta go,” he said. “You don’t want to miss the curtain.”

“Yeah.”

She shifted the wrap around her shoulders and it revealed the strap of her bra had slipped making it visible.

“Oh… ummm,” He pointed and she looked confused. Instead of stammering his way through the explanation, he walked forward and slipped a finger under the bra strap and aligned it with the strap of her gown. He slid his index finger down along the line he’d just straightened, against her skin, and then smoothed it up again unnecessarily. He’d managed to feel both her and her dress, and couldn’t decide which was more amazing.

“There, now you’re perfect.” He murmured and then realized he was standing very close to her. He met her eyes unabashedly - _you really are perfect_ \- and watched as uncertainty washed over her. He decided that he wasn’t being fair to either of them, and backed away, looking to his feet.

“Have a great time. Let me know if the production is any good, okay?”

“Sure, okay,” she said distantly before settling her wrap and walking away. “See you on Monday.”

“Yep,” he chirped and fixed a smile to his face until she was out of view. Then he stormed into the men’s locker room, and checked to see he was alone before sliding down the wall to sit on the floor with his head in his hands.

“Stupid, inarticulate, masochistic, hopeless idiot…” he growled angrily to himself.

~~~~

Prentiss waited until she got to the parking lot before she called Grant and cancelled on him. He sounded upset but she told him that she’d make it up to him - and she was sure that she would. Then she went and watched _Madama Butterfly_ with an empty seat beside her. She took in as many details as she could about the set decoration and the lighting and subtle directorial changes made because she knew that Reid was going to pepper her with questions about it on Monday morning and she didn’t want to leave out a single thing for him.


	18. Chapter 18

He wasn’t in the mood for a party. He just wanted to get on a plane to Vegas and start dealing with his Mom’s latest behavioral ‘episode’ that happened to coincide with the Christmas break, and _not_ think about how the past few Christmases had been so much more palatable because he’d spent part of them with Emily. He didn’t like the holiday to begin with - it was for families and his was a train wreck - but now he deeply resented the fact that he’d inadvertently built up some expectation for it and it was being subverted by those with more happiness than he’d ever have. She was probably going to spend it with Grant, or at least part of it, and probably spend the rest trying to avoid her mother. As he stood in the corner and clutched his watery cup of eggnog, he realized that he was even irrationally jealous of Ambassador Prentiss for the time she’d get to spend with Emily. How nuts was that? He was the epitome of grinch-iness at this affair and decided that he could mope better in private and with less chance of making a possibly fatal social-work move if he left the building as quickly as he could. There were so many people there anyway, no one would miss him. He’d worked at the Bureau for nearly six years and still didn’t recognize some of these people. Did they _all_ work on the sixth floor?

He put his drink down and made a beeline for the elevators. No one stopped him or called out, and he was almost relieved that maybe this one thing might go according to plan when he saw the gaggle of people crowding around the elevator bank. J.J., Morgan, and Garcia were there laughing, looking younger and more carefree than they usually did. He hated that he wanted to get away so badly that he couldn’t even enjoy seeing that on them. And, of course, Prentiss was there too wearing that red top, presumably because it was Christmas and not as some holiday-themed torture for his benefit. She caught his eye before he could make a break for the stairs, and beckoned him over, and because he was a sap for her, he obeyed.

“There he is,” she enthused, grinning and holding out an arm that she wrapped around his shoulder when he sidled up to her. “Where’d you disappear to? I’ve been looking all over.”

“You have?” She had?

“Yeah. You know - strength in numbers. We were just talking about how none of us seems to know anyone at this party.”

“I know,” he smiled at her. “I mean, did they come for the free food? How did they get in the building?”

She laughed a little too much and Reid suspected that there was an extra ingredient in her eggnog.

“We’ve been standing here profiling people as they head for the washroom. The results are truly frightening.” J.J. smirked from behind her cup.

“And _that’s_ not creepy in the least,” Reid arched a judgmental eyebrow at her and then softened it with a smile. “I thought I was the only socially retarded member of this group.”

“It’s not socially retarded to wonder about the guy in the grey suit who keeps loading up on egg rolls and then disappearing into File Storage down the hall.” Morgan mumbled and then nodded his head at a chubby man with bulging pockets who was breaking away from the party. “What is he _doing_ in there?”

“Maybe he has a cat,” Garcia offered.

“Or a hollow leg,” J.J. chirped.

“Or his boss tied to a chair whom he’s torturing with sub-par Chinese food,” Prentiss added.

“You are all deeply damaged people,” Reid said after staring them down. “I suddenly feel so well-adjusted in comparison. Thank you for that.”

“You’re welcome, kid.” Morgan chucked him on the shoulder while giving him one of his blinding grins. “Where were you going, anyway? The party profiling is just getting interesting.”

“Oh… home…”

There was a chorus of negative reactions and he felt Prentiss give his shoulders a squeeze but he didn’t look at her.

“No, really. Parties aren’t my thing and I have an early flight to Vegas tomorrow. I still have to pack…”

“You’re going home for the holidays?” It was Emily and she sounded disappointed. He looked up and saw that she was still smiling but it was forced. “I didn’t know that.”

“Yeah, Mom needs some help and Hotch is always on my case about accrued leave… so it seemed like a good time to go and sort things out.”

“You going for the whole break?” J.J. asked.

“I think so. It depends on Mom, really.”

“I hope she’s okay, sweety,” Garcia reached out and squeezed his hand. He felt Prentiss’s arm fall away from his shoulder.

“It’ll be fine.” 

He tried to make it sound casual, partly because he was sure things would be okay, and partly because he didn’t want his grinch-iness to infect his friends. He looked them over and saw glances of concern and care until he got to Emily. She showed those things too, but he could tell that she was wearing them as a mask over something else. His eyes lingered, trying to figure out what lay beneath, but she looked away and denied him access. His resentment flared again; if she didn’t want him to know that was just fine. He had other things to do… He reached behind her and pushed the elevator call button.

“Anyway, I’d better go…” he directed to no one in particular. “Have a good holiday, and someone let me know if grey suit guy escalates to dim sum.”

“I’ve got my eye on him,” Morgan growled.

“Wait… wait! Guys… mistletoe!” Garcia bounced on her platform heels and pointed at the twig that someone had anchored just above the elevator entrance. Reid felt his grinch behavior descend to a whole new level. Who would put mistletoe over a building exit? That was just salt in the wound of the perpetually single and socially dysfunctional… “Go on… gives us some sugar, Doctor Gorgeous.”

Garcia waggled her eyebrows and he became confused. Was he supposed to kiss _her?_ She didn’t move from Morgan’s side where she’d practically glued herself, so he just stood and stared dumbly. Eventually she rolled her eyes at him.

“C’mon, Reid, it’s Christmas. Loosen up a little.”

“But…”

“Kiss Prentiss,” J.J. spoke up with a mischievous wink. “She’s under it too.”

“Guys, I really don’t think-”

“Just do it, man. They’ll never let this go if you don’t. Trust me.” Morgan sounded as if he spoke from experience.

Reid looked to Prentiss who was giving J.J. such a fierce glare that he wondered if he’d missed something important. Then she turned to face him her mask still firmly in place. He didn’t understand what he’d done to deserve it, but he wasn’t about to drag it out if she were so determined to keep him at arms length. He shoved his resentment down and arched an eyebrow at her: ‘what do you say’? She seemed surprised by him, but didn’t send him any negative signals, so he quickly ducked in and gave her an awkward, dry kiss that only half met her lips. He took a step back as soon as it was done and turned to the group with a look of disdain.

“Satisfied?”

“That was just awful, honey,” Garcia deflated.

“Gee, thanks.”

Mercifully, the elevator dinged its arrival and he hopped on as if his shoes were on fire. He jabbed the lobby button and forced himself to grin like a maniac and act ‘festive’ - as if he hadn’t just been embarrassed by his friends and was now planning two weeks of exhaustive emotional buttressing with his mother in the desert. 

“Merry Christmas, guys,” he called just as the doors slid shut. He purposefully didn’t look at Prentiss to see how she reacted.

~~~

It was snowing. The kind of light, fluffy snowfall from comforting black and white movies, the kind that deadened the world around you and made you temporarily remember the beauty of silence. He raised the collar of his peacoat, looked up into the swirling sky above and just _breathed_. He wouldn’t get peace like this for a while. He just wanted to melt into it… to stay perfect and alone and shivering in the parking lot…

“Reid!”

He turned and saw her jogging towards him, pulling her coat around her as she emerged from the lobby out into the night. Her cheeks were pink from the fortified eggnog - at least he assumed it was fortified - it was obvious even at a distance. She looked unbelievably alive, like she was burning an outline into the darkness as she moved through it.

“Hey, I wanted to catch up with you… I wanted to be sure that things are really okay with your mom.” She was standing in front of him, her coat open revealing that distracting red shirt. “You usually don’t mention stuff like that. And you never said anything to me about going down there to take care of her… it sounds serious.”

“It’s a hiccup in her stabilization. It can be quite disturbing because she loses her hold on reality while they retitrate her medications, but, unfortunately, it happens. I’ve been through it a lot… so I know how it goes. It’s just easier for her if I’m there… she always seems to recognize me no matter how unconnected she may be to her surroundings…”

Prentiss stared at him for a long moment, an expression somewhere between sympathy and distress flickering across her. She took a step towards him and grabbed his arm.

“Let me come with you.”

He hadn’t expected that at all. “What? No… no. It’s Christmas. You have plans… with your mother, with Grant. Don’t you?”

“This is important, Reid. Screw Christmas. Who’s gonna be there for you during all of this?” She squeezed his arm and gave him a half-smile. “Besides, I’m always looking for excuses to avoid plans with Mother.”

He chuckled in spite of himself. “You are _not_ throwing me in front of that train again. Learn to have a meal with the woman who raised you. She’s not that bad. And… hey, you can always use Grant as a human shield…”

He didn’t know why he kept bringing Grant up. She hadn’t mentioned him once so far.

“Oh, Grant’s not Mom-ready.” She shook her head. “Not even close. She’d eat him alive.”

Reid thought that Ambassador Prentiss probably would eat a Navy SEAL alive if it proved to be amusing. “But you dragged me to dinner with her without any prep work whatsoever. I don’t know how I should feel about that…”

“I knew you could handle her,” Prentiss waved the statement away. “And Mom likes you. She’s mentioned it repeatedly. She thinks you’re too skinny, but otherwise you’re acceptable.”

“I don’t know how to feel about that either…”

“That’s not important right now. Your mom’s what matters… let me come along. Let me help.”

“No,” he shook his head but smiled at her because her insistence touched him and made him forget about the tide of resentment rolling in his stomach. “It would be awful for you.”

“I don’t care.”

“Go enjoy Christmas.”

“But… we always spend Christmas together. At least… part of it, anyway…”

Her eyes suddenly fell away from his and focused on where she held his arm. He felt tight all over; the snowflakes brushing against his face seemed to be scraping parts of him away. He was all too aware that they were alone and that she appeared to be asking him to extend his solitude to include her. To him, it almost sounded like a plea, but that couldn’t be true. His breath came in shallower puffs floating over them like ghosts.

“I’m sorry that I won’t be around for Christmas,” he said quietly as he stepped closer and felt his hand wrapping around her arm in return. “I’ll miss it too.”

“So, that’s a definite ‘no’ on accompanying you to Vegas, huh?”

He nodded slowly and waited for her to see it, then he shook her gently and smiled. “But you’re awesome for having offered… _genuinely_ offered. I really appreciate that.”

I just want you to know…” she hesitated and then looked up at him almost sheepishly. “That I’m here. I’m always here for you, you know…”

“I know that, Emily.”

She seemed a little more fortified as he said it, as he used her first name, and he wondered again what she was holding back because what she’d said was just what she could manage, not what she’d intended. He wished that he had the right to demand to know her mind, and then he wondered if Grant had established that right yet. Probably not… if she couldn’t trust him with her mother, she wouldn’t trust him with her secret self. He decided that he needed to stop thinking about that before he wound up resenting her again. He gave her arm a solid squeeze and then pulled her into a hug without overthinking it too much.

“Merry Christmas,” he whispered into the shoulder of her coat. “I’ll think of you agonizing over which fork to use when your mother serves aspic at her holiday party.”

Her arms wrapped around him tightly and then he felt a light slap on his shoulder before they squeezed him again. “You eat aspic with a spoon, dumbass.”

“See? I would’ve ruined everything with my silverware buffoonery.”

“But it would’ve made laugh.” She pulled away from him and she was smiling. A beautiful, unambiguous smile with her rosy cheeks and snowflakes outlining her hair… “Merry Christmas, Reid.”

And then she leaned in and kissed him. It wasn’t like the dry, awkward kiss he’d been goaded into at the elevators, but it also wasn’t anything more than ‘friendly’. Her lips pressed into his, warm and reassuring, and then, after a beat, she withdrew with her smile still firmly in place. It wasn’t until that moment that he realized he’d been secretly hoping _for years_ that she’d initiate something between them. He’d become accustomed to wanting her, but somewhere along the way he’d made up his mind that it wouldn’t be real unless _she_ did something about it. Suddenly, his resentment felt like hypocrisy. It wasn’t fair to cast her in that role, especially when it only existed in his head. It had been almost four years since their Vegas ‘incident’; if anything were going to change, it would have already. Considering that, in the beginning, what they’d wanted was for things to go back to the way they were before, it seemed unfair to gripe about the success of that outcome. _He’d_ changed his mind about what he wanted and hadn’t told anyone or done anything about it; he was only torturing himself.

“Hey…” she said gently, looking at him with concern. He’d probably been silent for too long again, staring at her. She was used to it but sometimes she couldn’t read him and she’d peer into him with those dark eyes and that worried wrinkle on her forehead and her mouth open a little in concentration, just so…

And he was kissing her again, this time with utmost focus on everything _except_ what it might mean. He slipped his lips between hers, matching their spacing, their tension, and just allowed himself to hold her there like that, as if it were an extension of their hug. It wasn’t the messy, desperate urgency of his dreams or his blurred memories, it was more like two stars collapsing into one another and creating something new, something _singular_ rather than plural. He pulled back slightly to catch his breath but her lips followed him as they connected once more. And then he just let it all go and allowed himself to sink into it and feel the sprinkle of snow landing on their cheeks and the beautiful stillness of a solitude made by two. Her grip on his arm tightened and he risked allowing his fingers to outline her cheek and then rest below her chin, anchoring her to him in another way. The wind shifted and they shivered apart as if they were one, experiencing it together. The break was soft, sliding away from each other gently, staring in wide-eyed quiet until Reid’s hand fell from her face. It seemed to bring Prentiss back to herself, and he expected her to offer some glib remark to make it all feel less than it was. But she didn’t do that. She just watched him like he’d shown her the rising sun for the first time, and then she smiled.

“Much better,” she murmured.

He thought he ought to be offended, but he only matched her smile with one of his own. “I’m just not that good in front of an audience.”

“No matter.”

She shivered as the snow swirled about her and he stepped forward without thinking and buttoned her coat. He knew she was watching his fingers thread one button after another until he reached her collar, which he raised up against the wind like his own.

“You need to stay warm…”

“Spencer…”

He was afraid of what she’d say next. He just wanted to stay in this perfect moment in an otherwise crappy predicament. Just a little longer, and then he’d get back to the reality of them being friends, and her dating someone else, and he planning out a lifetime of responsibilities that always put his desires on the back burner. She called out his name again and he looked into her eyes, ready for it to happen.

“Try and have a good Christmas.”

“I’ll do my best.”

“Would you call me? You know… to let me know how it’s going?”

“Uh, sure… if you want me to.”

“If it’s the only way I can help, I’d like to do that.”

“Okay. Thanks.”

She nodded and then seemed to be waiting on him. He shuffled a little and then backed away, one step, and then another… It appeared that neither one of them was going to mention the kiss.

“Okay, well… see you when I get back.” He offered her a lopsided smile, and a wave before he turned on his heel in the direction of his car. He got past two rows of vehicles before she called out to him again.

“Be safe, Spencer.”

He turned back and saw her standing where he’d left her, but her gentle expression had been replaced by an intensity that shocked him.

“In Vegas, I mean.” 

And he had no doubt about what she meant. It was the first time she’d brought it up since he’d told her he’d arranged the annulment. She stood in the snow, watching him in silence for a minute with that intensity all over her, and then she turned and walked back into the Behavioral Analysis building.


	19. Chapter 19

He called her twelve times in fourteen days while he was away looking after his Mom. It wasn’t planned - he’d only intended on calling once to fulfill his promise and to wish her a Merry Christmas again. But after every day, after all of his responsibility was spent, he needed to talk to her. She was right: he needed someone to prop him up as he propped his mother up, and even though it was just her voice on the phone, and sometimes only for a few minutes, it kept his head above water. She made him feel capable, as if he could endure just about anything so long as he could confess to her afterwards. It was a feeling that he couldn’t find the words to thank her for. He wondered if he’d ever come close to doing that for her.

After, as he lay in his hotel room, he tried not to relive their kiss. A kiss that they consciously decided on, one that they both remembered but neither had mentioned yet. He didn’t know what it meant - to kiss her like that knowing that she was with someone else. He wasn’t that sort of guy. He didn’t like competitions and he didn’t believe that he’d measure up against a Navy SEAL anyway. But still… she’d kissed him _back_. That wasn’t supposed to happen if you were happily in love, was it? He felt the warmth of her lips, relived that smoldering look she gave him across the parking lot and thread his hand into his pajamas more nights than he cared to think on. He didn’t dive into his Vegas memories; he came on the power of that kiss alone, the way the snow wrapped them together in silence, and the smile she gave him when they slid apart. He moaned and whimpered like someone who’d never been touched in his life before - all because of _a kiss_ and a single thought: more. 

He was in trouble.

He called early on New Year’s Eve. Well, it was still early in Nevada anyway. He’d settled his Mom and would be coming home in a few days relieved that she’d be able to marshal her way back to a kind of normality after he left. He was more exhausted than normal as he dialed the number, and when she picked up and there were sounds of a crowd and music in the background, he became irrationally jealous that he didn’t have her all to himself. Not that he ever really did…

“Hi!” She sounded breathless and effervescent. “I didn’t know if you’d call tonight.”

“I forgot it was New Year’s.” He tried not to sound resentful and decided that she couldn’t make it out if he failed at that. “Are you at a party?”

“Yeah. Mom’s famous for her New Year’s parties.”

“Where does she find the energy to throw all of these events?”

“Beats me. But I like these ones because everyone gets a snootful and starts talking like they really mean what they’re saying for once.”

 _That’s interesting,_ he thought.

“So? What’s the booze telling you to say tonight?”

There was a moment where all he heard was tinny music and her giggling. “Nah… I probably shouldn’t say that.”

“C’mon. You can’t drop that thread and then act like you didn’t. Besides, I’m, like, eight states away…”

“Yeah, but you’re coming back, right? So embarrassment could still happen.” She laughed again and it made him smile even though the conversation put him on edge.

“We’ve _done_ embarrassment, Emily.” He decided to risk a little. “We don’t flinch at that boogeyman anymore.”

“Yeah.” She drew out the word, not sounding entirely convinced and then she huffed a huge breath over the line. “Well, I can tell you this: I miss you.”

“I-I miss you too.” His lungs gave out on him at the end.

“Not just the normal way…” There was a ‘normal way’ to miss someone? “I miss you more than I should.”

“How should you miss me?” 

He wanted to pour everything down the line to her: _I miss you like sunlight, like clear water, like the night sky to a wandering traveler… tell Grant it was a dream because you’re elemental to me. We can’t be separated without causing a cataclysm…_

“You know,” she sighed, resigned. “I should miss you like my best friend.”

“And you don’t?” His heart was in his throat but before she could answer he heard a voice demand ‘who is that’ across the line. Prentiss said his name and then there was a muffled moment of sound and mixed voices before a new voice spoke to him.

“Good evening, Doctor. Happy New Year.”

“Ummm, Happy New Year to you too, Ambassador.” _Shit._

“It’s too bad you aren’t here. Emily appears to be in quite a truthful state this evening.”

“So I’ve gathered.”

“You might find it interesting to know that she’s called you a dozen times over the holidays.”

“I’m aware of that.”

“Yes, but you aren’t aware that she’s only contacted her Navy SEAL twice in that same time. Fascinating, don’t you think?”

Reid heard Emily’s voice yell out ‘Mom!’ in an enraged way and then the Ambassador tutted her, and the background noises diminished as if she’d moved into another room.

“Doctor, it would appear that you have Herculean patience.”

“I-I beg your pardon?”

“My daughter doesn’t pay any attention to my goading - except to resent it - so I have no illusions that my words will have any more influence over you. But I would like to preface them by saying that they come from a genuine desire for your happiness, dear boy. You really are… a decent man.”

“Ambassador,” Reid’s voice made a painful journey around his heart in his throat and it came out sounding raw and desperate. “I’m… not really following you here…”

“What. Are. You. Waiting. For?” she enunciated painfully.

“Ma’am, w-with respect, I-”

“Doctor,” she sighed. “You are far too skinny and, I suspect, far too smart for your own good. If you don’t start to selfishly look to your needs soon, you may miss out on the opportunity to better yourself, and Emily, for a lifetime. Nothing’s worse than to be hungry all your life.”

As unsettling as the conversation was, Elizabeth Prentiss had managed to distill his misery to a beautiful, crystalline truth: he hungered for Emily. Nothing else would do and his starvation was destroying him from the inside out. He couldn’t think of a single thing to tell her and then the sounds of the party swelled again and she carried on without him.

“Best of the New Year to you and your family, Doctor. Here’s Emily again…”

“Oh my God. I’m so sorry, Reid. Can you believe that she isn’t even tipsy? I don’t think she’s had a drop to drink this evening,” Emily gasped.

“I can believe it,” Reid muttered. 

“What did she say to you anyway?”

“Nothing that I didn’t already know.”

He held his head in his hand and let his spine sag before he flopped back onto the bed. What the _hell_ was he supposed to do now?


	20. Chapter 20

She surfaced from sleep like a cork bobbing in the ocean. The room was dark and close in the way it only is when you’re sharing it with someone else. Suddenly the bobbing made sense. He was pushing into her from behind and she relaxed into it with a drowsy sigh as she rolled her hips to get more of him. Hands ghosted up her sides and held her steady as he pushed into her harder. She felt him go deep and let out an unexpected moan that made her smile.

_That’s it… I love you like this… love it when it’s just the two of us, helpless against one another in the dark…_

She whined and rolled her hips again and his hands tightened down on her like a vice. Suddenly, he yanked her against him and knocked the wind from her, waking her fully. His thrusts came harder, more painfully, and the lulling oceanic rhythm evaporated. His legs wrapped around hers and cranked down so that she couldn’t move. She didn’t like it and twisted in his grip. His breath came harshly, next to her ear, and then she felt teeth pulling on her earlobe.

“That’s it, sweetheart… fight me a little…”

It was as if someone dumped her in a bath of ice water: this was Grant. And it suddenly made sense - the heaviness of his body, the abrupt shift in tempo, the terrifying grip - in her half-consciousness it had been _him_ and he wasn’t anything like that. The languid joy of moments earlier broke so quickly that she almost felt on the verge of tears at its loss. Her whole body was hitching in Grant’s grip as he slammed into her - it was too late to stop. She just had to get through it and then settle herself. It wasn’t as if she hadn’t enjoyed Grant in the past…

“C’mon, Emmy,” he husked. “Let me hear you, babe.”

God, she hated when he called her that. _He_ would never have given her a cutesy nickname, _he_ never would’ve demanded that she do anything other than what came naturally to her. She closed her eyes and tried to sink back under, sink back to him. She separated herself from her body and the rough demands that Grant was making, and instead tried to remember her last dream.

Hands skimmed over her skin, leaving heated paths as they circled her arms, her belly, the curve under her breasts. They teased rather than pawed, and when the tickle of it made her arch to get a little more, his chuckle brushed her neck.

 _Just ask_ , his voice was quiet, so familiar, but the heat of their closeness made it darker somehow. _I’ll give you anything._

“Let me move,” she husked aloud, and the heavy grip eased a little as if by magic. She rolled her back against him like a wave, trying to bring the feeling of the ocean back. Grant groaned into her shoulder and said something that she ignored. Her eyes were shut, focusing all of her energy on the voice in her head.

_Wish I could stay like this… with you, always. Don’t want to stop, don’t want the tide to ever stop carrying us forward…_

“Tell me,” she demanded as her hand slid between her thighs and she tried to pretend that the fingers were longer and stronger.

“Emmy,” Grant moaned. “So good… so good… come for me, baby. Wanna hear you break.”

She shook her head to block Grant’s voice. No one had ever made her come by demanding that she do so. She strained to hear _his_ voice under the noise Grant was making as he approached his inevitable end.

_Just want to flow around you endlessly… so that we’re always on the verge of blending together. The pressure of racing forward, coming to the edge and just… holding you there… forever._

“Yes…” she breathed as she worked herself. Grant clutched her hard as he came with loud exhortations to a deity he didn’t believe in.

_I never want to let you go, Emily._

She bucked against her fingers and imagined his face, his dark eyes widening as he watched her come, mouth open in wonder as he breathed the word ‘perfect’. His unruly hair brushed her face as he dipped low and took her lips, licking deep and slow as his excitement rose up and spilled into her. When he moaned against her, it felt like his whole body was speaking, giving voice to his gratefulness without words. She contracted her body against his imaginary one, and for the first time, she acknowledged _him_ when she called out his name in her mind. Thankfully, it just sounded like an unformed, relieved cry outside of her head. He faded from her so quickly then, and the tears threatened again as the panic set in. Grant pulled her close, kissing her neck and still breathing hard.

“That was amazing. I’ve never heard you come like that before, baby. So hot.”

“Yeah, amazing.”

She lay in Grant’s arms until his breathing evened and then she experimentally shifted under his weight. When he didn’t move, she quietly shimmied from the bed and fled to the bathroom, locking the door with a soft click. She looked at herself in the vanity mirror, her hair a mess and with red marks on her body from Grant’s hands. Her eyes welled up almost immediately at the sight, wishing more than anything that Grant could move her the way a phantom in her mind did. And then almost perversely, she heard the sound of _his_ voice trying to soothe her.

“Stop it,” she gagged and then turned on the faucet to cover the sound of her panicked sobs. “Spencer, please stop it…”


	21. Chapter 21

“You can do this,” he said to his reflection as he splashed water on his face. 

The circles under his eyes were darker than usual, signaling to anyone who knew him that he hadn’t slept much. And he hadn’t, but that was okay because he’d _finally_ worked up the courage to say what he had to. It was fifty-three days since they’d kissed, and thirty-nine days since his awkward New Year’s epiphany with Ambassador Prentiss: enough was enough. Grant or no Grant, he was talking to Emily today.

“You can do this,” he repeated through a mask of shaving foam.

He took care to make himself look as perfect as he ever managed, which wasn’t that inspiring, but it would have to do. He chose one of his better suits, remembering the way she’d been impressed when he’d done that for dinner with her mother, and wore his best tie and his luckiest pair of mismatched socks. He needed all the help he could get.

“You can do this,” he murmured while straightening his shoulders in the mirror and smoothing some erratic curls. “And what’s more - you _have_ to. You need her, you need each other. She has to know that.”

He stood as tall as he could and glared at his reflection almost daring himself to chicken out. His lips thinned into a tight, white line and his brows lowered as nerves soured his stomach. He shook his head once and grabbed his satchel from the counter, giving himself one last bolstering stare.

“You _are_ doing this,” he pointed at himself and then strode out of the apartment.


	22. Chapter 22

She was useless. She hadn’t managed to get much of anything done since she’d come back from lunch with Grant. Fuck, _Grant_. She had to make a decision about that - it wasn’t fair to either one of them if she dragged it out. He’d already looked hurt when she hadn’t given him an answer as soon as he asked. But he knew she was gun shy and he said he’d give her the time she needed.

 _He must really love you,_ she thought without much emotion as her eyes flicked to Reid without her permission. There had been a tension in him all day and she couldn’t nail down why. She should’ve been all over that, trying to get him to open up, to help him with whatever it was - that’s what friends did. But all she could do was wade through her own doubts and hope that he might notice, might choose to save her from herself. Completely fucking selfish.

“You okay?” He wasn’t looking at her but that didn’t mean anything. He had a way of taking in things on the sly.

She smiled. “I’m a basketcase. How did you know?”

“You’ve been retyping certain sentences over and over again, as if you can’t decide if they work or not. Keyboard ergonomics tell the story.”

“It’s creepy that you notice things like that.”

“Creepy _useful_ , yeah,” he smirked. “So, are you gonna tell me what’s bothering you or do I get the fun of guessing?”

She hesitated for a moment, her mouth falling open as she tried to figure out how to frame the dilemma. Then there was a squeal that made them both sit up straight and look around. Garcia was fluttering her way towards them wearing a grin wide enough to cause muscle strain.

“OhmyGodOhmyGodOH.MY.GOD,” she enthused and then wrapped her arms around Prentiss’s shoulders. Reid stared in bewilderment. “ _Emily!_ Why didn’t you tell me the moment it happened? The gossip monster needs a constant source of food, you know… Don’t imagine that you could get this by me. So, are you deliriously, gloriously happy, or what? Do you have any idea where you’ll move to? Oh! Why don’t you look in J.J. and Will’s neighborhood? Wouldn’t that be awesome?!”

“Garcia, how do you know already? It only _just_ happened?”

“What just happened?” Reid’s face froze into a mask of mild interest. “You didn’t tell me you were thinking of moving…”

“You need to read my blog more regularly.” Garcia pointed at Reid. “She’s moving in with Grant.”

Reid’s eyes locked on hers as all readable expression melted from him. His mouth fell open a little but he said nothing. Her chest tightened.

“He _asked_ me to get a place with him. I haven’t said ‘yes’ yet.”

“But you will,” Garcia steamrolled over both of them. “Because, holy crap, he’s hot…”

Prentiss shot Garcia a look. “I’m _thinking_ about it, Penelope.”

“What’s to think about? You’ve been dating for a while and from what Will tells J.J., Grant is nuts about you. The next step is living together, blossom. Followed by a dream wedding and happily ever after with a bunch of tiny marines to follow you both around…”

Prentiss started waving her hands in the air. “Wait… c’mon now, P. That’s just… hysterical pie-in-the-sky talk…”

“Maybe for you, hon. But Grant told Will that he was going to ask you - _that’s_ how I knew. I just assumed that he’d done it days ago, and that you’d accepted on the spot.” Garcia calmed her usual ebullience and gave Prentiss a concerned look as she squeezed her shoulder. “Guys like Grant don’t do these sorta things halfway. He’s probably gonna want all the pies that the sky has to offer. Why don’t you?”

“Because…” Her chest tightened even further and she found it hard to organize her thoughts. She looked back at Reid but he was just staring blankly at his computer screen, as if he could care less about this girly jibber-jabber. “I-I’m… just not sure, okay?”

“Oh sweety,” Garcia planted a kiss on Prentiss’s forehead and gave her a soft look. “No one’s ever sure about this stuff… it’s always a gamble. But you’ve stuck with him this long - that’s gotta count for something, right?”

“I guess.”

“You’ve been on your own a long time, Emily. It’s natural to feel scared about changing that. But you deserve someone like him. Someone who will love you just as you are… Don’t be afraid: he’ll protect your heart.”

Garcia leaned in and gave her a sound hug. Prentiss allowed herself to melt into it even though it wasn’t what she wanted. She had no doubt that, the way Garcia saw things, she was absolutely right about Prentiss’s reticence. When she pulled away, Garcia smiled and bopped her on the nose.

“Come talk to me whenever you feel like it, okay? I’m just down the hall…”

Prentiss nodded and kept her expression neutral. Garcia turned and poked Reid in the shoulder. He jumped as if he’d forgotten she was beside him.

“Don’t think you’ve escaped my attention, Doctor. Once we’ve got Emily settled in romantic bliss, I’m going to work on you.”

“Please don’t,” he croaked.

“Your happiness is not optional, tiger. We’re gonna find you a girl who’ll appreciate that giant brain and hazel eyes and big ol’ heart of yours. Even if it kills you.”

“It might,” he mumbled, but Garcia just huffed and ruffled his hair as she sailed past him on her way back to her digital fortress.

Prentiss watched her go, and then watched as Reid tried to straighten his rumpled self. It almost felt like he was shrinking away from her.

“I’d take her at her word if I were you,” she offered lightly, but he didn’t respond. He didn’t even acknowledge that she was there.

“Maybe she’s right… maybe I’ve been alone for too long. Maybe that’s the only thing freaking me out.”

He pulled another file folder from his stack of pending cases and flipped it open too forcefully. Crime scene photos slid out and tumbled to the floor. He grumbled to himself and bent to retrieve them but never once recognized that she was talking to him. Something cold and sharp lodged itself in her; he’d never just ignored her before, no matter how he was feeling.

“Don’t you have an opinion about this?” she asked eventually, almost afraid of his answer.

“Not one that’s relevant or helpful, no.” He wasn’t looking at her.

“C’mon, Spence-”

“What do you want me to say, Emily?” he suddenly snapped as he glared at her. “Are you looking for a blessing from your ex-husband?”

Her back went rigid. “Why would I need your blessing?”

 _Ex-husband._ Something stuck in her throat as she thought that. She’d never put Reid together in her mind with that term before, but it was technically accurate and a game changer. He’d obviously put the idea together long before her and it had lived there ever since; at some point in the past four years, he had thought of her as his wife. He turned away, stood, and roughly shoved his case file into his bag as he prepared to leave.

“And you can hardly claim the right to that term,” she said as forcefully as she could while trying to keep the conversation private in the bullpen. “Since neither of us remembers a damned thing about it.”

“I remember it.” His shoulder shrugged but he didn’t turn to face her.

“What?”

“I remember it, all right?” He turned back, his expression bitter, as he slung the strap of his bag over his shoulder. “I remember it all. That’s who I am, right? The guy who remembers things… it took a while, but it all came back eventually.”

He was gesticulating harshly and she knew that meant he was about thirty seconds away from losing his cool and leaving. But she needed him to stay; she needed to know what he knew…

“But… why didn’t you say anything? Tell me what happened!”

“No.”

“What do you mean, _no_?” Her voice was rising now and she stood to meet his gaze. “It happened to me as well… I have a right to those memories too, Reid…”

“You don’t have a right to _my memories_ , Emily. And what good would it do now, anyway? It was four years ago and you’re about to move in with a guy you claim to love.”

“I never said I loved Grant.” She surprised herself with that, and the sudden blankness that washed over Reid said that she’d thrown him for a loop as well.

“Then… then why are you considering it?”

It was a good question and she knew that her answers weren’t stellar. She was considering it because it had been six months and she hadn’t found anything technically wrong with him yet. She was doing it because he hadn’t given up on her like so many others had. She was doing it because she knew that she didn’t have too many more shots at making a relationship work and she wasn’t twenty-two anymore. She was doing it because it felt as though her options had narrowed dramatically and the chances of her suddenly getting good at being there for someone were diminishing just as quickly.

“I need this… need something,” she mumbled. “I’ve missed the window where I was supposed to learn to get good at this… you know, _being something_ to someone, and it feels like if I don’t reach out for him, that’ll be it. There won’t be anymore chances.”

Reid looked at her as if she’d just told him she had a terminal disease. He opened his mouth to say something, but nothing happened, not even an unintelligible sound. It was like the absence of expression, just a vacuum of emptiness.

“Grant’s not a bad guy. I wouldn’t settle for a bad guy,” she added weakly, trying to fill the void. 

Reid’s eyes shot to his feet allowing his hair to shield his face from her. His hand worried the corner of his jacket.

“When you meet him, you’ll see…” Her voice cracked, and he just nodded.

After a moment of awkward shuffling, he rolled forward on his feet as he made his way toward the elevators. He paused as he passed her, but didn’t look up.

“If he ever hurts you… I’ll break every bone in my body beating him. I don’t care who he is or what he’s done. You can count on it.” He made an odd, strained sound and then pushed through it to continue. “If this is what you want, I’ll respect that. But please don’t ask after my happiness again - the answer would be completely immaterial.” 

She stared at him in shock as he shrugged under the weight of his bag without meeting her eyes. Then he moved past her with his hands shoved in his pockets, gaze downward, like it was the end of any other day.


	23. Chapter 23

Prentiss sat in her car and watched the drizzle slide down her windshield. It was freezing and she’d been sitting there for god knows how long, and when she finally turned over the engine to get the heater going, she realized that she’d been crying as well. She brushed the wetness on her cheeks in surprise as she sniffled and wondered if anyone from the Unit had witnessed her crying in a half-catatonic state in the parking lot.

“Shit, Prentiss, you’re a damned mess,” she muttered to herself.

She had no idea what to do now. Grant was waiting for an answer, she was afraid of her future, and it felt as though she’d just utterly lost Reid. And he knew about Vegas! Jesus, how long had he known? Why hadn’t he told her? And why wouldn’t he share his memories? Was he ashamed? Was it embarrassing? Had either one of them done something so terrible that he’d rather lie about knowing it than let it hang over them forever? That seemed like a decision he’d make, something he’d take on in order to help them both. But she knew herself: she had to know what it was, even if it ruined them. And the thought of ruining them… the bitter way he’d looked at her when he found out about Grant’s offer… the declaration that his happiness had suddenly been made irrelevant by it… she immediately started to feel sick at the memory. She needed to do something to fix this, but she was paralyzed and it felt like she couldn’t go to anyone for advice. Normally, she’d turn to Reid, but…

_I can’t lose him. Fuck… I just CAN’T._

Her heartbeat sped up and she was having trouble breathing. The heat was blasting out of the car vents but she was still shivering. She remembered that night in the parking lot, not far from where she was sitting, as his hands bundled her into her coat, tugged at her collar, brushed snow from the edges of her hair… and she choked as if all the air had been sucked out of the car.

_I can’t!_

Her hand fumbled in her jacket pocket for her phone and she dialed a number before she gave herself a chance to second guess it. It shook against her cheek as she waited for the call to be answered.

_Please… I just can’t…_

“Hi, it’s me. Listen… I know this might not be something that you’re up for but… I think I’m in trouble. So much trouble it scares me and I… I really need to talk about it. I can’t think of anyone else and… I… I need…” 

Her voice cut out into a sob and she clamped her hand over her mouth to prevent from losing it entirely. Long minutes passed as she listened the voice on the phone. Tears slid down her face. She leaned back into her seat as she closed her eyes and hitched silently. After several more minutes, she took a few bracing breaths and scrubbed her face again.

“Thanks, Mom,” she said softly. “I’ll be there in an hour.”


	24. Chapter 24

He was moping. It was the kindest term he could come up for it. The less charitable view might have characterized it as pining or despairing or considering a life of eccentric bachelorhood housebound to his apartment while lurking from the gloom in ratty pajamas. Whatever name you gave it, he was doing it, and in typical Spencer Reid fashion, he was doing it at a genius level.

It was his own fault, really. He’d had four years to figure it out and had failed to make a move. Maybe for a long time he hadn’t realized that he should make a move in the first place, but that sort of semantic analysis wasn’t much of a balm in the here and now. Not when Emily - his _wife_ of one night and twenty-three and a half days - was going to settle her life on another. An impressive Navy SEAL commander with incredibly low body fat, a vast array of practical muscles, helpful advice on incapacitating people with improbable objects, and probably a big, swinging dick. Yeah, and she was worried about _settling_ … It was all he could do to not curl into a ball whenever he drew comparisons. 

But the way she spoke about her decision to be with Grant pierced him to the core. She really believed that she’d reached the end of her options (and obviously, he wasn’t one of them), and that she had a paucity of gifts to offer anyone who seemed interested. She’d always meant something to him, long before that night in Vegas. Even if they’d only ever been friends, he would always classify her as irreplaceable. He didn’t understand how everyone couldn’t see that, let alone make her feel less than that. But maybe he was just like all the others that way. Hadn’t he utterly failed to express how much she meant to him? He hadn’t convinced her that she was special and they’d been practically tied at the hip for years in the Unit. If he had neglected the long path of opportunities over that time span, was it any wonder that she neglected to look upon him that way as well?

So, yeah, moping was happening and it wasn’t going to end any time soon. He poured himself another glass of the Taylor Fladgate Tawny - it seemed as though he’d finally found the ‘special occasion’ to polish it off - and idly wondered if there was any conceivable way to perform a frontal lobotomy on himself. 

A knock sounded at his front door.

 _Not now_ , he grumbled internally, but the knock sounded again after a handful of seconds. And then again. He was about to shout something rude when he heard her voice muffled through the door.

“C’mon, Spencer. Your lights are on… I know you’re in there…”

He was on his feet and in the hallway standing in front of his door before the head rush caught up with him. It was probably a bad idea for them to speak again so soon after their bullpen talk. That had been two days ago and he was still trying to figure out how he was going to work with her sitting across from him for the foreseeable future, and yet hopelessly beyond his reach. His hand was on his deadbolt, trying to find the extra nerve to either turn the lock or walk back into his apartment…

“Spence, please?”

He squeezed his eyes shut for an instant and then turned the lock.

“Hi.” She tried to smile at him through the crack between the door and the frame.

“Hey.”

“Listen, I realize it’s late and you probably don’t want to see me right now… but may I come in for a moment?”

He sighed and let the door swing wide. He really didn’t want to talk to her, but she was Emily and he couldn’t refuse her even on his strongest day. He shut the door after she passed through and shuffled into the living room with the enthusiasm of a man walking to the gallows.

“Want some port?” he mumbled.

“You’re drinking it now?”

“I’ve decided that waiting for a suitably special moment is meaningless and subjective. It’s just fortified wine - nothing special about that.”

“Ummm, no thanks.”

“Suit yourself.” He sank into one of his battered library chairs as she took her traditional spot on the couch. “What’s on your mind?”

“I’m here… I came to ask you to tell me what happened in Vegas.”

“Emily-” His huff was angry. He wasn’t in the mood to embarrass himself, to get turned on, and then to watch her walk away with the only thing that she really needed from him.

“Spencer, I’m begging you. _Begging you_ to tell me.” Her voice broke sharply and he saw how truly desperate she was for the first time. “I need to know. I-I can’t let it go… I’ve tried so many times, you wouldn’t believe it. I… I have these dreams all the time… they never go away.”

“Dreams?”

“Like snapshots of memories, but I can’t know what’s real and what’s a random fabrication. You _know_ , Spencer, and I understand that you feel that your memories are your own but it’s easy to feel that way when you have all of the pieces of the puzzle. I’m still living with this void that changed us forever. It was four years ago, for chrissakes, and I still feel like I’m trying to get out from the shadow of Vegas every day.”

“It was sex, Emily. I’m not sure what more you can get out of the details.” He kept his voice low and he was trying not to look at her as she pleaded with him.

“If it was just sex, then why does it feel like this between us four years later? Something _happened_ beyond the obvious, Spencer, it had to. I don’t know how else to explain… this.” She gestured between them. “Please. You don’t know what it’s like to live with not knowing. I feel like I’ve done something horrible to us but you’re the only one who’s living with it.”

“You didn’t do anything horrible.”

“Well, something significant happened that night,” she sighed and he watched as it shook her frame. “Otherwise, why would you have kept our wedding certificate?”

He went perfectly still. “How do you know I kept it?”

“I saw it in the desk drawer two years ago.”

He stood up too quickly and really got a head rush this time. He rubbed his forehead and breathed through his mouth to stave off the motes that flirted with the edge of his vision. He heard her get to her feet as well.

“I found it by accident. I knew it had meaning then, and I can certainly see that it still has meaning now. I just… need to know what it is.”

“I can’t.” It barely made a sound as it left his mouth.

“Spencer-”

“Emily, I _can’t_. The memories I have… there are things that are too intimate. I’d have difficulty expressing them to anyone, let alone someone I shared them with who can’t remember any of it.”

He turned back and found her stricken, eyes glassy and disbelieving. “You’re really not going to tell me, are you? It doesn’t matter how I feel about it, does it?”

“What difference would it really make? What’s one night compared with what you have with Grant?”

“What _difference_ would it make?” Her face creased into incredulity. “It might make all the damned difference in the world, Reid! How dare you make that decision for me!”

She glared at him and he felt the bonds that held them in friendship begin to ravel and snap under the tension of the moment. If she left like this, it would be irreversible. They stared at each other in pointed silence, neither one willing to buckle under the strain of this obstacle between them. In time, she let out a frustrated sigh and said ‘Goodbye, Reid’ with stomach-churning finality as she stood tall and headed back towards the hallway. She was almost at the door before he could summon his voice over his racing heart.

“It’s the brightest and most intense memory I have.” 

Her footsteps stopped. 

“It frightens me more than Tobias Hankel or Chester Hardwick…” 

She walked slowly back into the living room, watching him as she went. 

“It creeps up inside me when I’m distracted and tempts me worse than Dilaudid ever did because I can’t avoid you. You’re always just… _there_ and I need that, but it also means that I can’t ever escape this memory.”

He closed his eyes to center himself but instead saw the image of her face lit with a kind of manic joy, throat moving as she laughed and arched against him, the echo of her calling his name ringing through him.

“It was a need to connect that was so intense that we’d rather destroy each other in the process than let it go.” He shivered and opened his eyes. “It was addiction and compulsion and abandon so raw that it seems impossible that it could have included me.”

She didn’t move. She just stood still with her mouth hanging open in a tiny O.

“But I also loved you deeply in those hours… in every _second_ of that one night, I adored you, and I know that’s very much ‘me’, so that’s why it haunts me.”

“Spencer…”

“Maybe that’s why I can’t get rid of the certificate,” he continued, unable to stop the truth from tumbling out of him if his life depended on it. She said that she wanted to know - well, she’d know it all, even if it cost them everything. 

“Maybe that’s why my drug-addled brain forced us into that chapel beforehand. Perhaps a part of me guessed at it and wanted to sanctify it so that I’d never be able to dismiss it as something less than what it was. I knew it was a singular experience never to come again.”

He watched her trying to find something to say - he could almost _see_ the conflict in her mind. These weren’t the kind of sentiments that friends could walk back, but if she was going to move on without him, she was absolutely right: she deserved to know what happened. 

“The rest is just detail,” he breathed. “Don’t you see? It’s the _feeling_ that’s lingered all these years, Emily, not the sex. If I’d told you… well, we will never be the same now. I’ll tell it all if you want, but, honestly, what I’ve just said is everything that matters.”

She swallowed hard and then took a hesitant step towards him, reaching for his hand.

“Don’t.” He stepped away from her. “Not if you’re going to make a life with Grant. Just take what I’ve told you and go. Please. Don’t pity me - don’t pretend to feel more than you do for my sake.”

She stared for a moment longer and then stepped forward again, finding his hand and quickly lacing her fingers through his at his side. She watched the shock settle across him before she spoke. 

“There is no me and Grant. Not anymore.”

He had to clear his throat before he could get his question out. “Why?”

“I got some advice, and… he and I talked… It just wasn’t going to work. Honestly, he didn’t really seem all that surprised by it.”

“Why?” He felt as if he were on a stupid loop or something. No other question appeared to matter.

She leaned up suddenly and then stopped as her lips brushed the edge of his. He gasped and waited, but she held still, a hair’s breadth away from crossing from fantasy to reality. The fingers of her other hand drifted up and touched the line of his jaw, there to guide him if and when she made her choice. His eyelids fluttered shut as he breathed shallowly, his fingers twisting into hers at their side. And they held still like that for what seemed like forever, breathing each other’s wariness and furtive hope. He wondered if this unique combination of anticipation and terror was the most perfect feeling he’d ever experience.

“It was always the feeling for me as well, Spencer,” she whispered. “I just didn’t have the memories to make it real… so it felt like I was fumbling around in the dark. I didn’t seem as though I could trust it.”

“And now?”

“You’ve been in my head for four years. This has been a long time coming.”

She erased the tiny space that separated them and kissed him hesitantly. He could feel her doubting herself almost immediately and the fear of losing this one chance made him twist their hands painfully so that he could have her closer. He pushed back against her, stowing his anxieties, and asked for more. He didn’t expect it to be earth shattering, or to live up to his fractured, four-year-old memories, but he wanted a chance _to try_ for all of that. He pulled at her lips, gently, trying to reassure her that this wasn’t as crazy as it seemed. They’d been delicately avoiding it for too long, but she knew him and he wanted her to remember that _right now_ as his thumb skimmed her cheek and his heart nearly stopped when she leaned into it. She sighed and let him in, melting against him like she’d done it a thousand times before. He wondered if one of her dreams was like this, if he had somehow done it exactly as she’d imagined. Wouldn’t that be the piece of luck that had been missing for the last four years? His lips slipped against hers, parting so that they could both catch their breath, and he discovered himself suddenly tangled around her - arms wrapping her up, fingers in her hair.

“God, all I wanted was a chance…” he mumbled into her skin before he could stop himself.

“Oh…” It rushed out of her and he didn’t know what it meant. He tried to focus on her expression while leaning his forehead against hers.

“Should I…” he stuttered. “I mean, if you-”

Her lips closed over his again, this time more urgently as she rolled up on her toes to get closer to him. He felt her push into his chest, her fingers digging into his hair as the kiss become rough and something that she controlled. He moaned and let her have him, a little delirious that she’d responded at all. He’d lived so long in his head about this; he’d partly convinced himself that it couldn’t exist anywhere else. Now, she moved in his arms and he just wanted to keep up, licking and moving and trying to take her in… When she pulled away again with a soft slip of their lips, she was smiling and he was desperately attempting to catch his breath. He pulled her to him tightly, not prepared to back away just yet.

“Stay with me, Em,” he gasped into her cheek. “I know this is sudden, but… stay.”

“You call four years ‘sudden’?” Her chest moved against his as she laughed.

“No, I guess not.” He pulled back just far enough to see her eyes. No more. “But we’ve got things to figure out here and I have no clue how this is gonna work and I don’t want to imply that this is just about sex… although it’s hard to get away from that considering where this all started-”

“Take a deep breath, Spencer.”

He did as he was told and tried to tell himself to talk to her as he always did because she hadn’t changed in the last five minutes. She really hadn’t. 

“What I want to say is… I know we should take it slowly, but I can’t let go of you yet. Not tonight.”

“I’m a grown woman, not some dewy-eyed virgin, Spence.” She smoothed the frown lines on his brow with a fingertip. “I’m not leaving, even though things are gonna be complicated as hell by morning.”

He grinned like an idiot and then tried to hide it. He felt colour rising in his face and then buried himself in her hair as she started laughing.

“Oh yeah, this is gonna be complicated as _fuck_ ,” she chuckled, and he pulled her up against him, her toes dangling above the floor. “But I’ve got a feeling it’ll be so good…”

“You can tell me ‘no’, Emily,” he mumbled, but he was already pulling them towards the bedroom.

“I can’t. I really can’t.”

He stopped short at the doorway and looked at her. She was completely serious - she couldn’t let go either. His stomach jumped a little. He reached for her and slowly drew her over the threshold into a kiss frank enough to qualify as language. His whole body radiated gratefulness at her presence, even if they just ended up staring at each other for the evening.

Yep. Complicated _as fuck._


	25. Chapter 25

She awoke in the darkness suddenly, unsure of where she was for a handful of seconds. Then it settled into her: the warmth next to her, and the pervasive exhaustion and relief… 

Reid, _finally_.

She sighed and sank into the mattress again. Her body felt like it was ticking down, slowly releasing the tension that it had built up over years of hesitation. She thought that there might be nothing left but a pile of goo when she finally let it all go, but at least that goo would be happy. He’d almost not told her, she’d almost walked away, they’d almost let this whole thing remain silent and unmentioned between them… 

An ache started to bloom in the middle of her chest and she felt the need to move. She slipped from the bed as quietly as she could and padded into his washroom where she could have some privacy. She flicked on the light and blinked at her reflection in the mirror. Her skin was cooling in the night air, goosebumps rose across her chest, over her belly, and down her arms. Her hands absently soothed herself leaving warm paths along her skin as they passed. Her eyes landed on a bruise forming on her shoulder, and then another further down on her hip; new war wounds to add to her collection that were four years old now. A smile curled her lips as her fingers brushed them. Her belief that Reid could never lose himself so completely with her evaporated with the sight of those marks. He’d _wanted_ so badly that it flooded over his edges and spilled into her - she didn’t think she’d ever felt something so powerful directed at her before. Even now, it took her breath away just thinking about it. 

She poured herself a glass of water and let it’s coolness bring her back to the present again. She hoped that they were both up for this. Truly. Because she hadn’t been kidding when she told him that she’d never gotten good at being with someone, and she couldn’t afford to squander this chance. She couldn’t risk losing him now that she knew everything she’d felt over the last four years had been based on _something_ , even if she’d probably never remember what that something was. Boy, Vegas had really screwed things up.

She started to shiver from the chill across her skin and decided that these thoughts could wait for daylight. She turned out the light and went to return to him. As she padded back into the room and saw his silhouette curled in the tangled sheets, she suddenly heard him calling from memory.

_His weight and warmth moved against her back, as if he’d been gone and then come to her again. Lips brushed the crest of her bare shoulder igniting the sting of a bite he’d already left there. She breathed in, still heated and disoriented all over, and rolled to face him even though all she could make out was his shadow. She murmured - something conflicted and unintelligible, but also tinged with awe. What were they doing here? Doing to each other? And why didn’t she feel the need to stop? She was scared, mostly of herself at this point, but knowing he was there with her snuffed out that dread almost as soon as it sparked. He watched her turn, and then slowly kissed that bite again, then traced his lips along the length of her shoulder, up her throat until they landed, heated and sure behind her ear. She shivered and his arms curved over her pulling her against him from shoulders to hips._

_“I love you, Emily,” he murmured._

_“You shouldn’t say that.” Something in her was holding onto rational, critical thought in this situation by its fingernails._

_“Why?”_

_“Because,” she shivered again, doubt bubbling up and making a home in her stomach. “What if tomorrow everything changes again?”_

_“I’ll still have tonight, and tonight I know it’s absolutely true.”_

She blinked in the dim light. Had that actually happened? Had he actually said that four years ago? It felt as real as any of the other fractured and blurred snippets she’d managed to recall over time. Maybe she should learn to trust them; it certainly _felt_ like him. She knew now that he was exactly the kind of guy who would love someone without reservation even if it were only for a night. He was old fashioned that way.

She slipped back into the bed and scooted up behind him feeling his warmth spread out over her chilled body almost immediately. He shifted, mumbling her name before he stilled again and, for some reason that ripped right through the center of her. She felt her heart landing in his hands - it would be up to him how he treated it. She pulled close, kissing a bite of her own that she’d left on his neck.

“I should have said it back,” she whispered.


	26. Chapter 26

They stood in line at the coffee shop and he was doing his best not to give into his desire to touch her all over. He’d allowed himself to hold her hand - in fact, she’d reached for it the moment they’d left his apartment and hadn’t let go - but otherwise he was feigning a coolness that he neither felt nor could adequately simulate. He felt as though he was about to explode in a messy, public display of how much he already loved this woman, and it had only _technically_ been nine hours. He had to get a grip. And a coffee and a scone. 

Prentiss was standing in front of him, yawning and scrolling through news items on her phone blissfully unaware of the potentially embarrassing emotional meltdown that was brewing behind her. Suddenly her fingers tightened around his and she leaned back into him casually.

“Hey. Says here that there’s a Lucio Fulci film fest - one night only - Saturday. Wanna go?”

She said it just like she’d asked him about plans a thousand times over the years, except this time her body told him that they had a right to each other that went beyond a movie and a hug goodnight. He watched her face as she raised her phone so he could see the web ad. It looked so easy on her, but maybe she was just trying to make it easy for both of them. He smiled and leaned in to see allowing his cheek to brush hers in the process.

“Yeah. Let’s do it.”

“Emily!”

They both looked up at the voice and as Reid saw a large man waving and heading for them, he felt cold all over. Prentiss let go of his hand and he suddenly felt cut adrift as well. The man came and stood next to her, too close for Reid’s comfort, and he had a sinking feeling about whom the guy was and how this was going to turn out. He was enormous, and fit, and evidently handsome, as he seemed to have halted local traffic by eliciting a fair number of envious glares from both sexes.

Shit. _Grant._

“Wow, this is weird. I didn’t expect to see you here. I was gonna call you today.”

“Well, I met up with Reid - this is his neighborhood.” Prentiss gestured to Reid. “Reid, this is Grant. Grant, Reid.”

“Oh hey, man.” Grant took Reid’s hand in a bone-crushing grip. “I’ve heard a ton about you. Emmy talks about you all the time.”

“Really?” Reid tried to surreptitiously shake some feeling back into his hand. “Well, that stands to reason, I guess. She talks about you too.”

“Well, I feel like I know you. It’s like finally meeting part of her family, ya know? Like meeting her brother. I know that she places a lot of stock in your opinion that’s why I’ve been trying to get her to introduce us. But I’m sure that we’ll spend more time together once Emmy and I find a place.”

“Grant…”

 _Her brother? A place?_ The coffee shop seemed to spin for a moment and then his heart sunk so low so rapidly that he expected to find it rattling around in his shoes. He should have known… somehow he’s been mistaken about last night. He didn’t know how, but that must’ve been the case.

Prentiss stepped towards Grant quickly. “I thought our last conversation was clear.”

“That’s why I was gonna call you today. I thought about what you said and I think it’s too soon to give up. I think that we both expected this to fail and so we seemed prepared to let it, but… you’re great, Emily… the best woman I’ve met in years. I think we could really have something if we tried - I realized that I don’t _want_ this to fail. I want to defy expectation and I want to do that with you. Give us a chance, babe.”

Grant turned to Reid. “Sorry to put you on the spot, but help a brother out… tell her she’s amazing and doesn’t give herself enough credit, will ya? You’re her friend, you know I’m right…”

Reid swallowed down his dry mouth and looked to see a flash of panic cross Prentiss’s face. “It’s true. You’re absolutely amazing… the best thing that could happen to a guy…” he choked out and hoped to God that someone would kill him before this scene ended.

Prentiss’s expression collapsed and she stifled a distressed sound with her hand before turning away.

“Emmy? Babe?”

Grant rubbed her arms but she shook him off and pulled it together, holding a hand in front of her like a physical stop sign.

“Grant, I’m sorry. I appreciate what you’ve said and maybe you’re right - maybe we never gave this a fair chance. But this isn’t what I want and I’m convinced that I could never make you happy. And I want you to be happy.”

“It’s only been three days. It’s barely over at all… there’s no reason why we can’t try again and-”

“There _is_ a reason why we can’t try again, Grant.” Prentiss reached for Reid’s hand and quickly laced their fingers together. Reid stared at their hands for a moment in shock, and then looked up to find Grant staring in utter disbelief as well. His gaze traveled from Reid’s hand, up his arm, until he met Reid’s eyes. He shook his head like a wet dog, his disbelief multiplying almost exponentially.

“It’s only been three days…” he murmured. “Dude, were you-”

“Nothing happened with Reid while we were together, Grant,” Prentiss answered quickly pulling Grant’s focus back to her. It was sorta true… but not entirely. “But there’s been something between Reid and I for years. We never did anything about it, but, like you said, I suddenly realized that I’d never given it a fair chance. I want to do that… I _have_ to do that.”

“Him?” Grant jabbed a thumb in Reid’s direction, falling back into the cliché that Reid assumed about him in the first place. “C’mon, Emmy, I’m talking about making a life together, not working through some office crush. We’re both too old not to take this sorta thing seriously.”

“This is as serious as it gets, Grant,” Prentiss snapped. “I know I’m not twenty anymore. The choices I make have more weight now, greater consequences. That’s why if I’m going to take a risk on the rest of my life, I’ve gotta feel it right down to my bones. It doesn’t matter if I made this choice yesterday or years ago; it’s the one I’m banking on. I’m playing the long game here and I feel great about it.”

“I see.” Grant sounded as if every bone in his chest snapped as he said it. Then he rolled his shoulders and fixed Reid with a look that had probably caused many a seasoned soldier to wet himself. “You better not screw this up, brother. I meant what I said about her.”

“I meant what I said as well.” He felt Prentiss’s fingers tighten around his.

Grant turned back to Prentiss, sagging as if carrying himself upright was almost too much to bear. His hand went to her arm and squeezed, then he dipped in quickly and kissed her on the cheek.

“‘Bye, Emmy.”

He turned and strode out of the café, now with the gaze of most of its denizens trailing after him. Then Reid felt the powerful presence of all of those eyes flicking back to him. His heart started slamming against his ribs. He looked to Prentiss as he stammered but she just wrapped him up in a kiss instead. It didn’t do anything to slow his heart rate, but the feel of her next to him brought him back to earth a little. When they came up for air he felt more than a little exposed and she looked at him sheepishly.

“I’m sorry. I was hoping that we could ease our way into this… but I guess not. Nothing like nailing down our commitment levels in front of a roomful of strangers and an ex-boyfriend, huh? That was way more drama than you deserved before your first cup of coffee.”

“What just happened?” he breathed as they unconsciously shuffled to the front of the coffee line.

“I’ll tell you what happened,” a bemused, pimply-faced teenager in a coffee-stained apron chirped from behind the counter. “You just lived out every dweeb’s wet dream, man: the nerd beat out the quarterback and made the cheerleader fall for him. If we had a wall of fame for this sorta stuff, you’d be on it, dude. Your coffee’s on the house today.”


	27. Chapter 27

“Wake up, zombie face. We’re gonna be late.”

He brushed her ear with his lips and she made a low, growl-y noise as she attempted to bury herself deeper in the pillow. He chuckled in spite of himself and she made some sort of muffled threat as she wriggled beneath him.

“What was that?”

“…said, you’re mean. A mean, mean man…”

“What I am is a guy with an unreliable carpool partner. But I made coffee, so there’s that.”

“…don’t have a zombie face…”

“Ohhh, I wouldn’t confidently assert that if I were you…” He pressed his lips against her throat and sighed making her squirm as she growled again. “Lucky for you I have such a fondness for horror movies.”

“Go away.” She reached up and attempted to lob an extra pillow at him. “Five more minutes.”

“You said that fifteen minutes ago.”

“Spen-ceeeeerrrrr…” she whined.

“All right, you leave me no choice…”

He leaned down over her in the bed and slowly kissed the crook between her neck and jaw. She squirmed again but didn’t push him away, so he skimmed his lips a little lower, letting his tongue flick her skin as he went. He stopped when he felt her pulse under his mouth, steady and sure, and allowed himself a slow, hard suck that made her mumble his name again. 

“C’mon, Em,” he whispered, and then she turned under him, pulling him blindly to her lips. “We gotta get going.”

“Mmphf,” she mumbled into his mouth as she arched up to meet him. He felt her nipples grazing his chest through her thin nightshirt and he groaned, allowing her in deeper as she licked him lazily. He held himself away from her body, even as she strained to pull him closer; he knew he’d never get them out of there in a timely fashion if she got the faintest idea of how hard she’d suddenly made him. Tricky, sexy bed zombie…

“Get up,” he gasped against her lips before sinking into them as his fingers twisted in her hair unconsciously. “We’re already so late…”

“Then a few more minutes won’t matter,” she smiled against his neck a moment before she bit him, hard. He whimpered and had to stop himself from pressing into her with all his force, grinding until the terrible energy in his hips subsided. “C’mon, I know you want to… I can feel it.”

“Jesus!” He tried to angle away from her lips but then she went to work on his chest instead. Her fingers began working the bare skin of his back, pinching and massaging, as they inevitably crawled towards his waistband. “Why do you enjoy tormenting me so much? I brought you coffee…”

Emily half whined and half giggled as she reached up and caught one of his hands, forcefully drawing it down her side as she wiggled. “Not my fault. You’re so good in the morning, Spence… makes me shiver just thinking ‘bout it…”

She pulled his hand over her hip and pushed it towards her core with a moan that he echoed. His fingers explored the edge of her panties for an instant before he pushed the thin fabric aside and slid his fingers into her with enough force to make her hips rock into him dramatically. She was probably right: a few more minutes wouldn’t matter.

“Want that?” He glared down at her, as his hands explored. 

“Not just that,” she panted back.

He bent low and kissed her hard, fighting her lips and tongue as he made her hips sway with his hands. She moaned into his mouth and he bit down on her lower lip, not enough to bruise, but sure enough to give her a reminder for the rest of the day. He gave himself over to the feeling of wanting to consume her, because he knew it was what she was asking for and he didn’t have much in the way of reserves when it came to holding that back. Finesse wasn’t required at the moment and they really didn’t have the time to indulge in it anyway. His hand left her center and roughly pulled her panties down her thighs. Then he fumbled with his own pants, just enough to get them out of the way, and then pushed into her in a frantic rush.

“Fine,” he gasped. “But you explain it to Hotch. He knows that I’m lying about why we’re late when I blush.”

He moved forward experimentally just as she curled her thighs over his hips causing him to go deep and making her cry out as if she’d just been presented with her favorite thing. He almost lost it on the spot.

“You’re perfect.” His mouth sucked at her throat as he set up a rhythm. She laughed, deep and reckless, her fingers digging into his ass. 

“Only to you,” she whispered.

“I’m the only one who matters.”

“Yes, you are.”

He rucked up her t-shirt roughly and then pulled her flush against his chest so that he could feel as much of her as possible. Her hips matched his so that they rolled together, trying to make a smooth movement amongst the tangled clothes and the uncoordinated grasping. She grunted into his chest, scoring his collarbones with her teeth, and he curled his back in response giving them a sharper angle and forcing more sounds from her. She was always more vocal when she was sleepy.

“I’ll never get enough…” 

He poured it into her mouth and felt her chest move against his in a noise that was half moan, half laughter. He tried harder, got rougher making the bed frame bump the other furniture as she continued to laugh under him. That sound drove him crazy - the way it made her throat move, the colour it brought to her face as she let it rule her - there was nothing mocking about it. It was just joyful, and all he wanted was to squeeze every last drop of it from her whenever she offered it to him. Making her _that happy_ was the biggest turn on he could imagine. He shifted and suddenly her hands were fisted in his hair, pulling almost painfully.

“There…” she whined, and curled tightly into his chest. “Harder…”

His body focused on the tension that suddenly thrummed through hers as he rolled and grasped and held at frenzied intervals. She cried out with every pass, a new and exciting sound that mixed with the snap of cotton and the thud of wood denting drywall. When she finally got there, she didn’t have much left in her arsenal save one loud, unambiguous curse. She tightened around him unbelievably, her eyes wide and riveted to him as he loomed over her, chest straining, hips driving hard against her. It triggered him in the way that all of their moments of solitude always did. It wasn’t always physical, sometimes it was the way she said his name, other times it was a look or the way they came together without asking. He pushed hard, going deep and bottoming out in a way that caught them both off guard. She whimpered, just on the dying waves of her own climax, and he pushed into her mouth roughly to lick the sound into him as his whole body contracted into a blinding path that led directly to her. He moaned until his full body tension broke, her legs squeezing him until he could barely move, her hands fisting in his hair as she whispered his name. And then he throbbed into her recklessly, gracelessly, hitching in silence as he breathed through his thrusts until there was nothing left but blissful exhaustion.

He settled over her and waited for her to mention an awkward elbow or too much weight somewhere, but she just ran her fingers lightly through his hair instead. It felt like grateful familiarity; a simple action that encompassed more meaning than the word ‘thanks’ ever could. He loved these moments when they just got it right without putting too much thought into it. He turned into her neck and left a gentle kiss along her pulse line.

“Mmmmm,” she rumbled beneath him.

“Better?”

“Mmmmm.”

He smiled. “Okay, ‘cause we _really_ have to get up now…”

She growled at him.

 _Jesus!_ , he huffed. _Stubborn little bed zombie…_

~~~~

They danced around each other in the kitchen in an intricate choreography of their own making. He finished buttering her toast and forced her to take a bite as she did up his necktie. She smoothed the tie down his chest, grabbed the toast from her mouth, tore off a dark end with extra butter - just the way he liked it - and gently directed it towards him as she chewed.

“Here.”

“Mmmm, ‘fanks.”

He grabbed the file stack from the corner of the kitchen counter and scowled. She did a quick pirouette, found his coffee mug, and pressed it into his hand as he tried to form a question.

“Where’s the-”

“Coffee table,” she mouthed around some more toast. “Next to the remote.”

“Good.”

He crossed the space in four gangly strides and swept the lost papers on top of the stack in his arms. He looked back at her in her half-tucked blouse, a piece of toast sticking out of her mouth, coffee mug tilting dangerously in one hand, and a folded Metro section under her arm. Only twenty minutes earlier they had been tangled and desperate, straining to let each other know how grateful they were for the other’s existence. _Perfect_ , he thought.

“Ready?”

She looked up at him in confusion. “Keys?”

“Left hand.” He smiled and jutted his chin towards her. A surprised noise left her as she looked in her hand, then she turned back and made a face at him that said ‘whatever, I can maim someone with a spoon’. She hustled up to him and gave him a quick kiss. He shifted his tremendous stack of files to one arm, and tucked her blouse end with his free hand.

“You,” she murmured warmly while watching his hand.

“C’mon.” His hand skimmed around to her back and nudged her gently towards the door. “We are so, so, so, so, sooooooo irredeemably late. To quantify it would become a philosophical exercise at this point: are we too late to affect change in the present, or just unconsciously anticipating future events as yet undetermined? Whatever the answer, it’s certainly all your fault.”

She stopped suddenly and he nearly smacked into the back of her. 

“I love this,” she said seriously. “I love everything about this.” He got it: sometimes these things just knocked you upside the head without warning.

“ _Yes._ ” He leaned in and gave her a soft, lingering kiss, and then another smaller one before he backed away. “Me too. Now, let’s go break some municipal speed laws.”

“Ohhhh, goody!”

Prentiss grabbed her jacket from where she’d dropped it on the hall table the night before, and they both hustled to the door with a renewed effort to be professional. As they breezed past, a frame above the table shifted and then settled crookedly on its nail as the front door slammed behind them. They would have to set it right when they got home, as they did every night. Reid thought it a little perverse and often suggested moving it to a straighter wall, but Prentiss enjoyed its persistent cockeyed nature. Each night she took the time to straighten the frame that held one torn, faded wedding certificate, and its newer, crisper counterpart below it.


End file.
